Lorraine Adams

Lorraine Adams is an American journalist and novelist. As a journalist, she is known as a contributor to the New York Times Book Review, and a former contributor to The Washington Post. As a novelist, she is known for the award-winning Harbor its sequel, The Room and the Chair.

Early life

Lorraine Adams earned her bachelor's degree at Princeton University in 1981, graduating magna cum laude. She then attended Columbia University, graduating with an M.A. in English and American Literature in 1982.

Career

Journalism

She was a staff writer for The Washington Post, and The Dallas Morning News.

She regularly contributes to the New York Times Book Review, and is a fellow at the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Adams and Dan Malone of The Dallas Morning News shared the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting, citing "reporting that charged Texas police with extensive misconduct and abuses of power", including rights violations.

Novels

Her first novel was published in 2004, Harbor, featuring North African Arab stowaways. It won accolades including Los Angeles Times Award for First Fiction, Virginia Commonwealth University First Novelist Award, and Entertainment Weekly Best Novel of 2004, and it made the New York Times Best Books of 2004 list.

Her second novel, The Room and the Chair, was published in 2006 and details the life of an American fighter pilot. The German-language edition is Crash (Zürich: Arche, 2011).

Amy Wilentz, reviewing The Room and the Chair in the Los Angeles Times, stated, "Lorraine Adams is a singular and important American writer. The Room and the Chair establishes this without question: It is remarkable for its ambitions and its achievements. It's a war novel, a reporter's novel and a psychological thriller. It encompasses the broadest outlines of our world. It is also Adams' second novel, and it is gutsier and throws a wider net than the topical and gorgeously written Harbor, her first. Both books are about U.S. involvement in the Middle East, about psychological and political blowback, about what happens when you wage a war and then suddenly it slaps you back, blindsides you."

Personal life

Adams lives in Harlem in New York City, and is married to the novelist Richard Price.

Awards

• 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting
• 2006 VCU First Novelist Award
• 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship

Selected works

• "Almost Famous", Washington Monthly, April 2002
• Harbor, Random House, Inc., 2005, ISBN 978-1-4000-7688-8
• The Room and the Chair, Knopf, 2010, ISBN 978-0-307-27241-6
• NYC 22 "Block Party" July 2012

External links

• "Turning Secret Intelligence to Fiction", The Wall Street Journal, ALEXANDRA ALTER, FEBRUARY 3, 2010
• "Five Debut Novelists. One Rock 'n' Reading Tour.", Powell's
• "The Leonard Lopate Show", WNYC, March 18, 2010
• "Up Front", The New York Times, THE EDITORS, May 18, 2008
• "Love, etc.: Authors Richard Price and Lorraine Adams wed", The Washington Post, The Reliable Source, May 20, 2012
• Works by or about Lorraine Adams in libraries (WorldCat catalog)