The Art of Fiction No. 215
“Every novelist should possess a hermaphroditic imagination.”
Jeffrey Eugenides, born on March 8, 1960, in Detroit, Michigan, is the author of three novels and one short story collection. His first novel, The Virgin Suicides (1993), first appeared as a short story in The Paris Review’s Winter 1990 issue; it depicts, using a plural first-person narrative to represent neighborhood adolescent boys, the suicides of the five Lisbon sisters in seventies Grosse Pointe, Michigan. The novel was later adapted into a 1999 film by Sofia Coppola. In 2003, he published his second novel, Middlesex, which won the Pulitzer Prize and explores questions of gender, intersexuality, and the history of Detroit through the eyes of its narrator, Cal. The Marriage Plot—named after the literary device—followed in 2011, and in 2017, Eugenides released his first short story collection, Fresh Complaint.
“Every novelist should possess a hermaphroditic imagination.”
On the morning the last Lisbon daughter took her turn at suicide—it was Mary this time, and sleeping pills, like Therese—the two paramedics arrived at the house knowing exactly where the knife drawer was
A short story must be, by definition, short. That’s the trouble with short stories. That’s why they’re so difficult to write.
Every year, at our Spring Revel, we give three honors: the Hadada Prize, the Plimpton Prize, and the Terry Southern Prize. This year, Jeffrey Eugenides presented the Plimpton Prize to Ottessa Moshfegh.
The Plimpton Prize for Fiction is a $10,000 …