Mary Doria Russell
Mary Doria Russell was born in Chicago, Illinois, United States on August 19th, 1950 and is the Novelist. At the age of 73, Mary Doria Russell biography, profession, age, height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, measurements, education, career, dating/affair, family, news updates, and networth are available.
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Mary Doria Russell (born August 19, 1950) is an American novelist.
Early life and education
Russell was born in Elmhurst, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Both her parents were in service, with her father being a Marine Corps drill instructor and her mother a Navy nurse. She was raised as a Catholic but she left the church at age 15, and her attempts to figure out how much of the faith passed on to her children fueled the ubiquity of religion in her work.
She graduated from Glenbard East High School in Lombard, Illinois, which has registered its chapter of the National English Honor Society in her name (as Mary Doria Russell). She is also a major sponsor of a Glenbard East scholarship, which was established in honor of English teacher Richard Cima.
Russell obtained her B.A. M.A. in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. at Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, and Ann Arbor's PhD. in Biological Anthropology.
Personal life
Russell lives in Lyndhurst, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. Don and her partner Don have been married since 1970; they have one son.
Academic career
Russell's doctoral research interests were in bone physiology, craniofacial biomechanics, and paleoanthropology. She twice received the Trotter Award for outstanding research by a doctoral student and went on to teach graduate-level osteology in the Anthropology Department of the University of Michigan and human gross anatomy at the Case Western University School of Dentistry in Cleveland, Ohio.
She had a major scientific journal devoted to Neandertal research, as well as research into a biomechanical explanation of the supraorbital torus (browridges) and statistical methods to distinguish taphonomic evidence of secondary burial from that of butchery.
Writing career
Russell's fiction has been praised for meticulous study, fine prose, and narrative motivation. She has worked in a variety of fields.
Russell's first two books, The Sparrow and its sequel Children of God, (Random House Villard in 1996 and 1998), have been described as speculative fiction and concentrated on the cultural and psychological implications of the first encounter with aliens. Both investigate the issue of evil (theodicy) and how to reconcile a benevolent, omniscient, all-powerful deity with lives full of undeserved suffering.
Russell received the Arthur C. Clarke, BSFA, and Tiptree annual science fiction book awards (below), and it was the basis for Russell's nomination of Best New Writer in 1998; in German translation, Sperling received the Kurd Lasswitz Award for Best Foreign Novel. The American Library Association's Children of God Award was given to God by a child of God. The novels received the Spectrum Classics Hall of Fame Award and were given Russell Russell the Cleveland Arts Council Prize for Literature.
Russell was a "author with a strong reputation for cognitive clarity and narrative power in her brief [science fiction] career; after the Emilio Sandoz sequence, she migrated to other fields."
Russell's books have been categorized as historical novels, but she draws from a variety of genres to tell these stories.
A Thread of Grace (Random House, 2005) is a World War II drama set in Northern Italy that includes both the Italian resistance movement and the plight of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution throughout Europe. The majority of the story is based on accounts by survivors from the time, when many Italian citizens encouraged Jews to find safe harbor in their farmlands, cities, and ports. (Russell herself is of Italian origins and has converted to Judaism.)
Dreamers of the Day (Random House, 2008) is a historical romance set in the Midwestern United States and the Middle East during the First World War and Great Influenza. It focuses on the 1921 Cairo Peace Conference, when Winston Churchill, T. E. Lawrence, Gertrude Bell, and a consortium of British oilmen invented the modern Middle East, thus establishing the region for a hundred years of war.
Doc (Random House 2011) is both a murder mystery and a sympathetic portrayal of Doc Holliday, the popular "gambler and gunman" who is also known as Doc Holliday. Doc is set in Dodge City, Kansas, 1878, the first year that Dr. John Henry Holliday's tuberculosis had been in check long enough for him to practice dentistry, a career in which he excelled. The story revolves around the unexplained death of a half-black, half-Indian boy, which leaves a strange void in the city's life. Doc was selected as the Top Pick in Historical Fiction by the American Library Association, as well as the Kansas State Library's Notable Novel and the Great Lakes Great Reads pick.
Following Holliday and the Earp brothers' ride to Tombstone, Arizona, Epiph (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2015) finds out where Doc dropped off, following Holliday and the Earp brothers' escape from Tombstone, Arizona, and follows the O.K.'s legendary Gunfight. Corral, as well as the development of the mythology that surrounds it, are among the various aspects of its history. Epitaph is deeply researched; in addition to a comprehensive investigation into the individuals involved, the 60-year-old Russell rode 58 miles on horseback through Tombstone's mountains, tracing the Earp Vendetta Ride. Allen Barra's book was dubbed the best historical Western of 2015 by True West Magazine, and it was praised by True West Magazine as the best historical Western ever written on the subject. The Ohioana Library Foundation named it the Best Fiction Prize of 2016; it also received the Ohioana Readers Choice Award for the year.
The Women of the Copper Country (Atria Books, 2019) is a painstakingly researched book about the Copper Country's 1913-1914 strike, the first unionized attack on all the copper mines in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The central character, "Big Annie" Clements, is based on "America's Joan of Arc," Anna Clemenc, who founded the Women's Auxiliary of the Western Federation of Miners and proudly carried the flag in several marches against the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company. Other historical figures, including James MacNaughton, General Manager of Calumet and Hecla, Woodbridge N. Ferris, governor of Michigan during the strike, and Mother Jones, a well-known activist and union organizer, have been elaborately and convincingly portrayed. The Library of Michigan awarded a Michigan Notable Book Award for 2020.
Russell is very popular on the lecture circuit, lecturing at colleges, universities, and libraries.
Awards
- James Tiptree, Jr. Award, 1997, The Sparrow
- British Science Fiction Association (BSFA) Best Novel Award, 1998, The Sparrow (UK edition: Transworld Publishers Black Swan, 1997)
- Arthur C. Clarke Award, 1998, The Sparrow
- John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, 1998, citing The Sparrow
- Cleveland Arts Council Prize for Literature
- American Library Association Readers Choice Award
- Gaylactic Spectrum Hall of Fame Award, 2001, The Sparrow and Children of God
- Kurd Lasswitz Preis (Germany), best foreign novel, 2001, The Sparrow
- USA Friends of the Library Reader's Choice Award: Children of God, 1999
- American Library Association Top Pick, Historical Fiction: Doc, 2011
- Great Lakes Great Reads: Doc, 2011
- Kansas State Library Notable Novel: Doc, 2011
- True West: Best Historical Western: Epitaph, 2015
- Ohioana Best Fiction Prize: Epitaph, 2015
- Ohioana Readers Choice Award: Epitaph, 2015