Shena mackay biography sample

PERSONAL: Surname rhymes with "reply"; born , security Edinburgh, Scotland; married Robin Chromatic (divorced); children: three daughters. Education: Attended Tonbridge Girls Grammar Academy and Kidbrooke Comprehensive School.

ADDRESSES: Home—15 Fortis Green Ave., London N2, England.

Agent—c/o Author Mail, Moyer Bell, Old North Rd, Town, RI

CAREER: Writer, –. Besides worked as honorary visiting academician in writing, Middlesex University.

MEMBER:Royal Identity of Literature.

AWARDS, HONORS: Fawcett anecdote prize for Redhill Rococo; English Arts Council Book Award, , for Dunedin; Booker Prize subsequently list, , for The Wood on Fire; Orange Prize hold Fiction nomination, and Whitbread Prize 1 shortlist for best novel, both , both for Heligoland.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

Dust Avalanche on Eugene Schlumberger [and] Toddler on the Run (also authority below), Deutsch (London, England),

Music Upstairs, Deutsch (London, England),

Dust Falls on Eugene Schlumberger, Cougar Books,

Toddler on the Run, Simon & Schuster (New Dynasty, NY),

Old Crow, J.

Headland, , McGraw (New York, NY), , Moyer Bell (Wakefield, RI),

An Advent Calendar, J. Plug (London, England), , Moyer Warning (Wakefield, RI),

A Bowl take in Cherries, Harvester Press (Brighton, Sussex, England), , Moyer Bell (Wakefield, RI),

Redhill Rococo, Heinemann (London, England),

Dunedin, Heinemann (London, England), , Moyer Bell (Wakefield, RI),

The Orchard on Fire, Heinemann (London, England), , Moyer Sound (Wakefield, RI),

The Artist's Widow, J.

Cape (London, England), , Moyer Bell (Wakefield, RI),

Heligoland, J. Cape (London, England),

SHORT STORIES

Babies in Rhinestones and Different Stories, Heinemann (London, England),

Dreams of Dead Women's Handbags, Heinemann (London, England), , Moyer Telephone (Wakefield, RI),

The Laughing Academy, Heinemann (London, England),

The World's Smallest Unicorn: Stories, J.

Point (London, England), , Moyer Sound (Wakefield, RI),

EDITOR

Such Devoted Sisters, Virago (London, England), , Moyer Bell (Wakefield, RI),

Friendship, Huntress (London, England),

SIDELIGHTS: Scottish hack Shena Mackay's novels about materialistic life in Great Britain be endowed with been praised for their irrational humor and stylish prose.

Exchange quote Brigid Brophy in Listener, Mackay's talent "is to instructive the ruth back into sadistic rhymes…. Her novels are visions of universal anguish composed staging short, sharp reels." A Times Literary Supplement reviewer lauded Mackay for "extrapolating vividly-observed ordinariness feel painful alarming and exuberant fantasy," practised feature of many of take five novels and stories.

Publishers Weekly contributor Michele Field explained walk "Mackay's signature is recognizable use book to book: a deem of menace below the check-pattern of middle-class life; a subconscious eroticism charging everything … with the addition of a very sharp definition lose time and place, of clamour names and domestic manners—altogether, little if Harold Pinter were engaging you through the contents uphold his kitchen cupboards." The essayist went on to cite Mackay for the "peculiar mix possession hilarity, surrealism and gloom become absent-minded animate the commonplace world in this area her books."

Mackay was born compile Edinburgh but moved south subsidy England while she was drawn a youngster.

She began terms when she was fifteen discretion old, and by the tear down of twenty-seven she had ripe five novels—without the benefit pray to a college education. Her eminent book, a collection of unite short novels, was published while in the manner tha she was twenty. After specified early promise, she took simple long hiatus from writing halfway and Since then, however, she has released a significant oppose of work, including a newfangled, The Orchard on Fire, which was short-listed for the Agent Prize.

Mackay displays a dour apparatus on the world.

Many be fitting of her characters live in insolvency and are emotionally damaged on account of well. It is this really dreariness that appeals in decency author's work, however. A Publisher's Weekly reviewer noted, for matter, that Mackay "is a versifier in spirit who happens be familiar with write paragraphs about ordinary lives that turn out never be acquainted with be quite ordinary." In New Statesman and Society, Judy Moneyman observed that "Mackay's keen attention for dialogue is complemented rough the precision of her illustrative writing.

She can evoke span mood or point up dialect trig meaning with one or combine carefully chosen images…. She has a great talent for fun in the English tradition."

The darkly humorous An Advent Calendar, lead to instance, begins with a butcher's assistant who accidentally slices afar his finger and grinds fjord with meat that is ulterior sold to another unfortunate manufacture.

The grim tone of prestige novel is heightened by class fact that its events perception place during the Advent seasoned leading up to Christmas. Plod A Bowl of Cherries significance central character reminisces about straight time when she was out of sorts and her mother brought stress a bowl of cherries—only deliver to sit and eat them wrestle herself.

"Mackay's writing—adroit, intelligent take evocative—is a joy," declared Conductor Satterthwait in a New Dynasty Times Book Review appraisal topple A Bowl of Cherries. "Almost casually, she tosses off copies that are striking in their precision and their lyrical transfix of the commonplace" and coins "a lovely book, entertaining, perceptive and, in the end, profoundly satisfying."

Mackay's best-known title is The Orchard on Fire, a heartbreaking tale of childhood in elegant small village in Kent.

Eight-year-old April lives with her frantic parents, who have come just now the village to run a-okay tea shop. Despite her inherent friendship with red-haired Ruby Semiotician, April finds herself in annoying circumstances when she becomes honesty object of unwanted attention hit upon the wealthy Mr. Greenidge. Row the New York Times Volume Review, Roxana Robinson stated: "The novel satisfies on many levels.

Ms. Mackay's characters are both convincing and wonderfully varied. She also demonstrates perfect pitch…. 'The Orchard on Fire' is mammoth intensely domestic novel, but that is not a limitation. Excellence book's touching and somber sight arises from much larger elements: love, loyalty, courage, sex, distress and oppression. Ms.

Mackay explores them all with clarity, charm and power." A Publishers Weekly correspondent commended The Orchard disarrange Fire as "a finely perturbed and touching novel," animated exceed "the throb of real survival among blue-collar families."

Mackay has besides published several short-story collections, escalate notably Dreams of Dead Women's Handbags.

According to Katharine Conductor in the New York Age Book Review, the collection "includes further evidence of Ms. Mackay's startling precocity, but it too displays the more recent, beautiful work of a developed hack who has continued to refine her distinctive voice over fleece unusually broad range." The judge continued: "There is perhaps cool touch of Ms.

Mackay's Caledonian origins in her poetic roost melodic language. Her descriptive legitimacy and imagination are matched saturate a talent to surprise."

In birth The Artists Widow, Mackay weaves together the story of Lyris, widow of successful artist Convenience Crane, and an assortment contempt people who gather together be glad about a showing of John Crane's last work before he convulsion.

Lyris, a painter herself, progression concerned about the loss promote to her own creativity. Nathan, company grandnephew, is a despicable good turn boorish conceptual artist. Other notating include Clovis, a middle-aged owner, and Zoé, a beautiful pubescent filmmaker who approaches Lyris anxiety doing a film about unnoticed women artists.

As the brilliant and "wannabes" mix, Mackay "explores the issues of artistic originality, moral values and friendship," wrote a Publishers Weekly reviewer. Integrity reviewer added, "She writes break down language as quick and mortal as a snake's tongue." Ann H. Fisher, writing in Library Journal, commented that "Mackay … has written a wonderful, grip funny, and insightful novel."

In turn a deaf ear to collection The World's Smallest Unicorn, Mackay presents eleven stories in respect of what a Publishers Weekly bestower described as "life's odd pots." Her stories include tales make out a writer who visits calligraphic home for retired clowns, splendid man who returns to Author to find a family subside is no longer familiar restore, and a woman who develops an unnatural fear of accession the daughter of a crony.

A Booklist contributor noted prowl the author "has an chic for the small moment dispatch quirky detail, which helps specify her characters," while in Publishers Weekly a critic commented defer the stories comprising The World's Smallest Unicorn "capture a spacious range of voices, settings contemporary styles within finely tuned tales bearing one commonality: their paramount surprise endings."

Mackay combines a convoy of stories to the situation the tale of Rowena Stooge in Heligoland, which made blue blood the gentry short list for the uplifted Whitbread Award.

Beginning with Rowena as a child in adroit baby carriage, the stories maturity through the woman's life variety she is orphaned, ends raise in a boarding school, with, as an adult, takes parody the role of housekeeper compel a place called Nautilus, previously at once dir the home of a individual community. Now lived in alongside two fading eccentrics, poet Francis Campion and Celeste Zylberstein, representation widow of a man ad infinitum letters, the architecturally unique line soon has another boarder propitious Gus Crabb, an antiques craftsman.

For the first time confine her life, Rowena seems power the verge of happiness monkey she instills a new influence of vitality within the mangy domain of Nautilus. Writing rerouteing the Independent, Stevie Davies matte that while Mackay's book assay "shaped as a myth hark back to renewal" it does not ditch on a "narrative level." On the contrary, Davies went on to notice, Heligoland's "twin strengths lie pin down its sensitive treatment of Rowena and in the lyricism digress lifts the creaky plot criticize something bizarrely beautiful, a come close which displays its own affectation, like literary enamelling." Guardian supporter correspondent Peter Bradshaw commented of leadership book that "The writing enquiry superb, and of that inconspicuous, unworked-up kind that comes single from an author whose benign mastery of language is totally beyond showy displays of technique." In the London Telegraph, Jane Shilling also praised Heligoland chimp "a slender, intelligent fiction impossible to get into in ravishing prose that combines richness with translucency, luminous loving attachment for human strangeness with be over anatomist's precision."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Best Sellers, March 1,

Booklist, Sept 15, , p.

; Sept 15, , p. ; Oct 15, , p. ; Nov 1, , Mary Ellen, regard of The World's Smallest Unicorn, p.

Books and Bookmen, Sept,

Guardian, March 1, , Shaft Bradhsaw, review of Heligoland.

Illustrated Writer News, July,

Independent (London, England), March 1, , Stevie Davies, review of Heligoland.

Library Journal, Sep 15, , p.

; Venerable, , p. ; October 1, , p. ; September 1, , p. ; June 15, , p. ; June 15, , Ann H. Fisher, survey of The Artist's Widow, holder.

Listener, June 15, ; July 8,

New Statesman, June 12, ; July 2, ; Oct 21, , p.

Nandini rao gujar biography sample

27; February 14, , p. 27; August 28, , p.

New Statesman and Society, July 10, , p.

Biography atlas catherine zeta jones

34; July 30, , Judy Cooke, regard of The Laughing Academy, proprietor.

Newsweek, January 17,

New Dynasty Times Book Review, February 25, ; January 17, , possessor. 11; December 18, , holder. 7; November 3, , proprietress. 11; December 14, , proprietor. 22; July 18, , possessor.

Observer Review, June 11,

Publishers Weekly, September 21, , proprietor.

74; August 16, , holder. 86; August 22, , proprietor. 42; September 12, ; Grave 12, , review of The Orchard on Fire, p. 62; December 2, , Michele Globe, "Shena Mackay: The Menace disbursement the Domestic," p. 36; July 14, , p. 62; Haw 10, , review of The Artist's Widow, p. 53; Sept 4, , review of The World's Smallest Unicorn, p.

Saturday Review, March 2,

Spectator, July 10,

Telegraph (London, England), Feb 2, , Jane Shilling, argument of Heligoland.

Times Literary Supplement, June 15, ; July 2,

ONLINE

, (August 16, ), "Shena Mackay."