The Lost Father
by Mona Simpson
List Price: $13.00
Pages: 528
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0679733035
Publisher: Vintage
Mona Simpson was born in Green Bay, Wisconsin, in 1957; when she
was ten, her parents separated and she moved with her mother to California.
Although this detail of her life story is similar to that which makes
up the core situation of Anywhere But Here, Simpson tends to be
reticent about the extent to which her fiction borrows from the details
of her life. She has said, "What I'd finally say about truth and autobiography
is that all writers are probably trying to get at some core truth of life,
at some configuration that is enduring and truthful. I just haven't found
the truth to be my vehicle."5
After getting her B.A. in
creative writing at Berkeley, she did an M.F.A. at Columbia, where she
began work on Anywhere But Here. Upon finishing her M.F.A. she
worked for several years as an editor at the Paris Review. Since
the enormous success of Anywhere But Here, Simpson has written
The Lost Father and A Regular Guy, which have contributed
further to her impressive critical reputation. She was named one of Granta's
Best Young American Novelists and has won several prestigious awards,
including the Whiting Writer's Award, a Guggenheim grant, the Hodder Fellowship
at Princeton University, and a grant from the Lila WallaceĞReader's Digest
Foundation. Since 1988 she has taught at Bard College, where she is the
Sadie Samuelson Levy Professor of Languages and Literature. She lives
with her husband and son in New York City and in Santa Monica, California.
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