Mary Beth Keane

Mary Beth Keane is an American writer of Irish parentage.[1] She is the author of The Walking People,[2] Fever,[3] and Ask Again, Yes.[4] In 2011 she was named one of the National Book Foundation's "5 under 35," and in 2015 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for Fiction.[5][6]

Mary Beth Keane
Keane at the 2019 Texas Book Festival
BornJuly 3, 1979
EducationBarnard College, Columbia University (BA)
University of Virginia (MFA)
Period2009–present
Notable works
  • Ask Again, Yes (2019)
Website
web.archive.org/web/20190726062855/http://www.marybethkeane.com/

Personal life

Born in the Bronx, New York City, and raised in Pearl River, New York with her sisters, Keane attended Immaculate Heart Academy in Washington Township, New Jersey.[7]

Keane graduated from Barnard College, Columbia University, with a B.A. in English Literature in 1999.[6] She later attended the University of Virginia, where she earned her M.F.A. in Fiction in 2005.

Raised a Catholic, she wrote an essay for Vogue Magazine in 2018, about her decision to leave the Catholic Church.[8]

Keane lives outside New York City with her husband and their two sons, Owen and Emmett.[1][9]

Career

In 2001, Keane was hired as a receptionist at a New York literary agency, where she met her agent.[10]

Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, Vogue, The Daily Beast, The Antioch Review, New York Stories, The Recorder, The Baltimore Review, and elsewhere.

Her second novel, Fever, a fictional retelling of the life of Typhoid Mary, was listed as one of the New York Times Editor's Choice novels in March 2013.[11][12]

Her third novel, Ask Again, Yes debuted at #5 on The New York Times Best Sellers list in June 2019 and in August 2019 she appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon to discuss the book.

Influences

Keane has named William Trevor, Seamus Heaney, Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood and Elizabeth Strout among authors who have influenced her writing.[9] She has said her Irish heritage influences the characters she chooses to write.[1]

Awards

"Ask Again, Yes" was selected as The Tonight Show Summer Reads choice for 2019 after five days of audience voting that garnered nearly a million votes,[13] was the winner of the NAIBA 2019 Award for Best Fiction[14] and was a finalist for the 2019 Goodread's Choice Award Best Fiction.[15]

Works
  • The Walking People (2009)
  • Fever (2013)
  • Ask Again, Yes (2019)

References
  1. "BookPage". BookPage and ProMotion, inc. Retrieved 2020-06-02.
  2. Mary Beth, Keane (2009). The walking people (1st Mariner Books ed.). Boston, MA: Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 9780547394367. OCLC 759834631.
  3. Mary Beth, Keane (2013). Fever. New York: Scribner. ISBN 9781451693416. OCLC 800031459.
  4. Keane, Mary Beth (2019-05-28). Ask Again, Yes. ISBN 9781982106980.
  5. "John Simon Guggenheim Foundation | Current". gf.org. Retrieved 2016-07-18.
  6. "Mary Beth Keane | Official Publisher Page | Simon & Schuster". authors.simonandschuster.com. Retrieved 2016-07-18.
  7. "The Commuter's City". opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com. Retrieved 2016-07-18.
  8. "Amid Scandal After Scandal, One Catholic Mother Faces A Painful Choice". Vogue. Retrieved 2019-03-02.
  9. "Writing Routines". writingroutines.org. Retrieved 2020-06-02.
  10. "Mary Beth Keane's New Novel Paints a Portrait of the Irish". Publishers Weekly. PWxyz, LLC. Retrieved 2 June 2020.
  11. "The New York Times". nytimes.com. Retrieved 2016-07-18.
  12. "The New York Times". nytimes.com. Retrieved 2016-07-18.
  13. "The Tonight Show Summer Reads". nbc.com. NBCUniversal Media, LLC. Retrieved 2 June 2020.
  14. "NAIBA Book of the Year Awards". NAIBA. New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association (NAIBA). Retrieved 2 June 2020.
  15. "2019 Goodreads Choice Award Best Fiction". Goodreads. Goodreads, Inc. Retrieved 2 June 2020.
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