Author Bio
• Birth—March 8, 1960
• Where—Detroit, Michigan, USA
• Education—B.A., Brown University; M.A., Stanford
University
• Awards—Whiting Writer's Award; Guggenheim
Fellowship; Pulitzer Prize
• Currently—lives in Princeton, New Jersey
Jeffrey Kent Eugenides is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and short story writer. Eugenides is most known for his three acclaimed novels, The Virgin Suicides (1993), Middlesex (2002), and The Marriage Plot (2011).
Eugenides was born in Detroit, Michigan, of Greek and Irish descent. He attended Grosse Pointe's private University Liggett School. He took his undergraduate degree at Brown University, graduating in 1983. He later earned an M.A. in Creative Writing from Stanford University.
In 1986 he received the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Nicholl Fellowship for his story "Here Comes Winston, Full of the Holy Spirit." His 1993 novel, The Virgin Suicides, gained mainstream interest with the 1999 film adaptation directed by Sofia Coppola. The novel was reissued in 2009.
Eugenides is reluctant to disclose details about his private life, except through Michigan-area book signings in which he details the influence of Detroit and his high-school experiences on his writings. He has said that he has "a perverse love" of his birthplace. "I think most of the major elements of American history are exemplified in Detroit, from the triumph of the automobile and the assembly line to the blight of racism, not to mention the music, Motown, the MC5, house, techno." He also says he has been haunted by the decline of Detroit.
He lives in Princeton, New Jersey, with his wife, Karen Yamauchi, and their daughter, Georgia. In the fall of 2007, Eugenides joined the faculty of Princeton University's Program in Creative Writing.
His 2002 novel, Middlesex, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the Ambassador Book Award. Part of it was set in Berlin, Germany, where Eugenides lived from 1999 to 2004, but it was chiefly concerned with the Greek-American immigrant experience in the United States, against the rise and fall of Detroit. It explores the experience of the intersexed in the USA. Eugenides has also published short stories, primarily in The New Yorker. His 1996 "Baster" became the basis for the 2010 romantic comedy The Switch (with Jennifer Aniston and Jason Bateman).
His third novel, The Marriage Plot (2011), has been called by Carlin Romano in the Chronicle of Higher Education" the most entertaining campus novel since Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons. The plot is based on graduation day at Brown University in 1982.
Eugenides is the editor of the collection of short stories titled My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead. The proceeds of the collection go to the writing center 826 Chicago, established to encourage young people's writing. (From Wikipedia.)