Helen Schulman

Last updated
Helen Schulman
BornApril 1961 (age 63)
New York City, U.S.
Occupation
  • Novelist
  • screenwriter
Education Cornell University (BA)
Columbia University (MFA)

Helen Schulman (born April 1961) is an American novelist, short story, non-fiction, and screenwriter. Her fifth novel, This Beautiful Life, was an international bestseller, and was chosen in the 100 Notable Books of 2011 by the New York Times Book Review.

Contents

Background and career

Helen Schulman was born in New York City, where she lives, writes, teaches. She received a BA at Cornell University and an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. She has published seven novels. Her most recent novel, Lucky Dogs, was released on June 6, 2023. In a starred review of the book, Kirkus Reviews wrote "In a word: wow . . . Schulman has engineered a series of breathtaking aha moments, set to go off like timed explosives . . . Her finest work to date." [1]

Her novel Come With Me, was released on November 27, 2018. It's a book "about how technology breaks apart and then re-configures a family." [2] The New York Times writes, "Schulman has wrapped her distress in such an attractive package that the book slides down almost without your noticing its seriousness of purpose." [3] The NYTimes Book Review says it is "strikingly original, compelling and beautifully written." [4] Kirkus reviews writes, the book is "Richly imagined, profound, and of the moment" [5] and San Francisco Chronicle calls it "mind-blowingly brilliant." [6] Speaking with Evangeline Riddiford in an interview about her book, Schulman says, "My father, an atheist, always said both heaven and hell were right here on earth. I’ll do him one step further: sometimes both exist in your living room." [7]

This Beautiful Life was published in 2011, about which The New York Times wrote, “Riveting.... As much as this book fiercely inhabits our shared online reality, it operates most powerfully on a deeper level, posing an enduring question about American values.” [8] The novel was a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice, and was on numerous bestseller lists, including The New York Times, L.A. Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and The Boston Globe.

A Day at the Beach, published in 2008, focuses on a family living through the September 11 attacks and the aftermath. The New Yorker wrote, “Schulman, in her fourth novel, gets both her cultural moment and the psychological particulars of a disintegrating marriage exactly right, and her writing is distractingly, almost brazenly beautiful. The result slyly demonstrates both the inadequacy of art and its insolent resilience in disaster's aftermath.” [9]

Schulman's fiction, non-fiction, and reviews have appeared in such places as Vanity Fair, Time, Vogue, GQ, The New York Times Book Review , and The Paris Review . She co-edited with Jill Bialosky the anthology, Wanting a Child. She has written numerous screenplays, including co-writing an adaptation of her novel P.S., which was made into a film in 2004 starring Laura Linney. Schulman's essay "The Habitual Aborter" was published in Time and in the anthology, Wanting a Child. Her essay, "My Father, The Garbage Head" was published in the anthology, An Uncertain Inheritance and her essay on Faulkner's 'As I Lay Dying' was published in lithub. [10]

Schulman has taught in graduate programs at Columbia University, New York University. She teaches at the New School University where she is the Fiction Chair at the Writing Program and a tenured Professor of Writing. [11] She is a former Guggenheim Fellow [12] (2019–20), she has also been a Sundance Fellow, an Aspen Words Fellow (The Aspen Institute), a NYFA Fellow, A Tennessee Williams Fellow at Columbia University and has won a Pushcart Prize.

Selected works

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarah Schulman</span> American writer (born 1958)

Sarah Miriam Schulman is an American novelist, playwright, nonfiction writer, screenwriter, gay activist, and AIDS historian. She holds an endowed chair in nonfiction at Northwestern University and is a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities. She is a recipient of the Bill Whitehead Award and the Lambda Literary Award.

Caroline Leavitt is an American novelist. She is the New York Times bestselling author of Is This Tomorrow and Pictures of You, as well as 8 other novels, including Cruel Beautiful World and With or Without You..

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Helen Humphreys</span> Canadian poet and novelist

Helen Humphreys is a Canadian poet and novelist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Francisco Goldman</span> American novelist

Francisco Goldman is an American novelist, journalist, and Allen K. Smith Professor of Literature and Creative Writing, Trinity College. His most recent novel, Monkey Boy (2021), was a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Laila Lalami</span> Moroccan-American writer, and professor (born 1968)

Laila Lalami is a Moroccan-American novelist, essayist, and professor. After earning her licence ès lettres degree in Morocco, she received a fellowship to study in the United Kingdom (UK), where she earned an MA in linguistics.

Stacey D'Erasmo is an American author and literary critic.

Joanna Scott is an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist. Her award-winning fiction is known for its wide-ranging subject matter and its incorporation of historical figures into imagined narratives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Katherine Center</span> American author

Katherine Sherar Pannill Center is an American author of contemporary fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lauren Groff</span> American writer

Lauren Groff is an American novelist and short story writer. She has written five novels and two short story collections, including Fates and Furies (2015), Florida (2018), Matrix (2022), and The Vaster Wilds (2023).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dara Horn</span> American writer, novelist and professor (born 1977)

Dara Horn is an American novelist, essayist, and professor of literature. She has written five novels and in 2021, released a nonfiction essay collection titled People Love Dead Jews, which was a finalist for the 2021 Kirkus Prize in nonfiction. She won the Edward Lewis Wallant Award in 2002, the National Jewish Book Award in 2003, 2006, and 2021, and the Harold U. Ribalow Prize in 2007.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rachel Kushner</span> American writer (born 1968)

Rachel Kushner is an American writer, known for her novels Telex from Cuba (2008), The Flamethrowers (2013), and The Mars Room (2018).

Maureen Theresa Howard was an American novelist, memoirist, and editor. Her award-winning novels feature women protagonists and are known for formal innovation and a focus on the Irish-American experience.

<i>When You Reach Me</i> American childrens novel, 2009

When You Reach Me is a Newbery Medal-winning science fiction and mystery novel by Rebecca Stead, published in 2009. It takes place on the Upper West Side of New York during 1978 and 1979 and follows a sixth-grade girl named Miranda Sinclair. After Miranda finds a strange note, which is unsigned and addressed only to "M," in her school library book, a mystery is set into motion—one which Miranda ultimately must face alone. At the same time, Miranda juggles school, relationships with her peers, and helping her mom prepare for an upcoming appearance on The $20,000 Pyramid, a popular game show hosted by Dick Clark. Important characters in the story include Miranda's mother; Richard, her mom's good-natured boyfriend; Sal, Miranda's childhood best friend; and a homeless man who lives on Miranda's block and is referred to only as "the laughing man." Central themes in the novel include independence, redemption, and friendship.

Rebecca Stead is an American writer of fiction for children and teens. She won the American Newbery Medal in 2010, the oldest award in children's literature, for her second novel When You Reach Me.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Malinda Lo</span> American writer

Malinda Lo is an American writer of young adult novels including Ash, Huntress, Adaptation, Inheritance,A Line in the Dark, and Last Night at the Telegraph Club. She also does research on diversity in young adult literature and publishing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary Beth Keane</span> American writer of Irish parentage (born 1979)

Mary Beth Keane is an American writer of Irish parentage. She is the author of The Walking People (2009),Fever (2013),Ask Again, Yes (2019), and The Half Moon (2023). In 2011 she was named one of the National Book Foundation's "5 under 35," and in 2015 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for Fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sherry Thomas</span> American writer

Sherry M. Thomas is an American novelist of young adult fantasy, historical romance, and contemporary romance. She has won multiple awards including the Romance Writers of America RITA Award for Best Historical Romance for Not Quite a Husband in 2010 and His at Night in 2011.

Katy Simpson Smith is an American novelist based in New Orleans. As of 2023 is a member of the core faculty at the Bennington College Writing Seminars.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jasmin Darznik</span> American author

Jasmin Darznik is an Iranian-born American writer. She is the New York Times bestselling author of three books, The Bohemians, Song of a Captive Bird, a novel inspired by the life of Forugh Farrokhzad, Iran's notorious woman poet, and The Good Daughter: A Memoir of My Mother's Hidden Life, which became a New York Times bestseller. A New York Times Book Review "Editors' Choice" and a Los Angeles Times bestseller, Song of a Captive Bird was praised by The New York Times as a "complex and beautiful rendering of [a] vanished country and its scattered people; a reminder of the power and purpose of art; and an ode to female creativity under a patriarchy that repeatedly tries to snuff it out." The Bohemians was selected by Oprah Daily as one of the best historical novels of 2021. Darznik's books have been published in seventeen countries.

Akil Kumarasamy is an American author and an assistant professor in the Masters of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing at Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences-Newark. Her collection of short stories Half Gods won The Story Prize Spotlight Award and the 2021–2022 Annual Bard Fiction Prize. Her novel Meet Us by the Roaring Sea was released in August 2022.

References

  1. ↑ "In a word: Wow". Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved 6 June 2023.
  2. ↑ "Life in the multiverse: A review of 'Come With Me,' by Helen Schulman". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 26 November 2018.
  3. ↑ Lyall, Sarah (2018-12-17). "The Multiverse Isn't All It's Cracked Up to Be in 'Come With Me'". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2018-12-21.
  4. ↑ Mccauley, Stephen (2018-12-19). "A Silicon Valley Start-Up Offers Hints of Alternate Lives". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2018-12-23.
  5. ↑ "Kirkus Reviews: Come with Me". KirkusReviews. Retrieved 22 November 2018.
  6. ↑ "Life in the multiverse: A review of 'Come With Me,' by Helen Schulman". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 26 November 2018.
  7. ↑ "An Interview with Helen Schulman". Public Seminar. Retrieved 24 May 2019.
  8. ↑ Russo, Maria. "Total Family Breakdown, 21st-Century Manhattan Style". The New York Times. Retrieved 1 March 2014.
  9. ↑ "Books Briefly Noted: A Day at the Beach". The New Yorker. Retrieved 28 February 2014.
  10. ↑ "The Avid Reader: Helen Schulman on As I Lay Dying". lithub. Retrieved 22 May 2019.
  11. ↑ "The New School for Public Engagement Faculty". The New School. Retrieved 28 February 2014.
  12. ↑ "John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Retrieved 24 May 2019.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.