Mark Childress was born in Monroeville, Alabama. He has lived in Ohio, Indiana, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, California, and Costa Rica, and currently lives in New York City.

Attending high school in the 1970s in Mississippi was an experience that contributed to his desire to become a writer. (He wore a tasteful charcoal-gray tuxedo to the prom, and the girl he invited was very good-looking.)

After graduation from the University of Alabama in 1978, Mark was a reporter for The Birmingham News, Features Editor of Southern Livingmagazine, and Regional Editor of The Atlanta Journal and Constitution.

His articles and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Times of London, San Francisco Chronicle, Saturday Review, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, Travel and Leisure, and other national and international publications.

Tender, a Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club selection, was named to several Ten Best lists, and appeared on many national bestseller lists. Crazy in Alabama, a featured selection of the Literary Guild, was an international bestseller in the U.S., Great Britain, Germany, Spain, Italy, France, Russia, Holland, Denmark, Poland, and Finland, and appeared on many Ten Best lists. Crazy was named The (London) Spectator's "Book of the Year" for 1993 and a New York Times "Notable Book of the Year," and spent ten months on the Der Spiegel bestseller list in Germany.

Mark received the Thomas Wolfe Award, the University of Alabama's Distinguished Alumni Award, and the Alabama Library Association's Writer of the Year. He has also written three picture books for children, Joshua and Bigtooth (1992), Joshua and the Big Bad Blue Crabs (1996), (both from Little, Brown), and Henry Bobbity Is Missing And It Is All Billy Bobbity's Fault, (Crane Hill Publishers, 1996).

He wrote the screenplay of the Columbia Pictures film "Crazy in Alabama," directed by Antonio Banderas, and starring Melanie Griffith, an official selection of the Venice and San Sebastian film festivals.

Mark is the author of six novels: A World Made of Fire (1984), V for Victor(1988), Tender (1990), Crazy in Alabama (1993), Gone for Good, (1998), and One Mississippi, to be published July 3, 2006 by Little, Brown and Co.

Books by Mark Childress

One Mississippi

by Mark Childress

You need only one best friend, Daniel Musgrove figures, to make it through high school alive. After his family moves to Mississippi just before his junior year, Daniel finds fellow outsider Tim Cousins. The two become inseparable, sharing a fascination with Arnita Beecham, the most bewitching girl at Minor High. But soon the friends commit a small crime that grows and threatens to engulf the whole town.

Gone for Good

by Mark Childress