Joanna Scott
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Joanna Scott (born June 22, 1960) is an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist. Her award-winning fiction is known for its wide-ranging subject matter and its incorporation of historical figures into imagined narratives. A native of Darien, Connecticut, Scott graduated from
Trinity College Trinity College may refer to: Australia * Trinity Anglican College, an Anglican coeducational primary and secondary school in , New South Wales * Trinity Catholic College, Auburn, a coeducational school in the inner-western suburbs of Sydney, New ...
in
Hartford Hartford is the capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It was the seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960. It is the core city in the Greater Hartford metropolitan area. Census estimates since the ...
and earned a master's degree from
Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...
. In addition to her work as an author, she has had a career in academia, teaching at the
University of Maryland The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of M ...
and the
University of Rochester The University of Rochester (U of R, UR, or U of Rochester) is a private research university in Rochester, New York. The university grants undergraduate and graduate degrees, including doctoral and professional degrees. The University of Roc ...
, where she has been a member of the faculty since 1988. Scott is currently the Roswell Smith Burrows Professor of English at the University of Rochester. She lives in
Rochester, New York Rochester () is a City (New York), city in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, the county seat, seat of Monroe County, New York, Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, New York, Buffalo, ...
.


Biography


Early life

Joanna Scott was born on June 22, 1960, the youngest child of Walter Lee and Yvonne Scott. She was raised in Darien, Connecticut, with her three older brothers. Her father worked in advertising, and her mother was a psychologist for the school system in
Stamford, Connecticut Stamford () is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut, outside of Manhattan. It is Connecticut's second-most populous city, behind Bridgeport. With a population of 135,470, Stamford passed Hartford and New Haven in population as of the 2020 ...
. Scott has described her childhood as one of extraordinary freedom but also isolation, both of which nurtured her imagination. As a student at
Darien High School Darien High School is the single public high school serving the town of Darien, Connecticut, in the United States. Background In 2014, Darien High School had the highest SAT scores in the state. In the 2004–2005 school year, Darien had the s ...
, she encountered the novels of
William Faulkner William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where Faulkner spent most of ...
, which she has described as an "unsettling" experience that prompted her first attempts at writing fiction. After taking a bus trip across the United States, Scott enrolled at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where she majored in English and studied under the author Stephen Minot. She spent one semester in
Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...
and one academic year at
Barnard College Barnard College of Columbia University is a private women's liberal arts college in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1889 by a group of women led by young student activist Annie Nathan Meyer, who petitioned Columbia ...
before graduating in 1983. She then spent a year as an assistant at a literary agency in
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
before enrolling in the Creative Writing Program at Brown University, where she studied with the authors
Susan Sontag Susan Sontag (; January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004) was an American writer, philosopher, and political activist. She mostly wrote essays, but also published novels; she published her first major work, the essay "Notes on 'Camp'", in 1964. Her ...
,
Robert Coover Robert Lowell Coover (born February 4, 1932) is an American novelist, short story writer, and T.B. Stowell Professor Emeritus in Literary Arts at Brown University. He is generally considered a writer of fabulation and metafiction. Background C ...
, and John Hawkes. After earning her master's degree in 1985, she stayed at Brown for a year as a teaching fellow.


Career

Scott began writing her first novel, ''Fading, My Parmacheene Belle'', while at Brown University. It was published in 1987. Writing in ''The New York Times'', Nancy Ramsey called it a "remarkably inventive first novel" that was moving and wise. In a separate review in ''The New York Times'',
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt Christopher Lehmann-Haupt (June 14, 1934 – November 7, 2018) was an American journalist, editor of the ''New York Times Book Review'', critic, and novelist, based in New York City. He served as senior Daily Book Reviewer from 1969 to 1995. Bi ...
criticized the novel's plot, but praised the "mad eloquence" of its prose. At the time of her first novel's publication, Scott was an instructor at the University of Rochester. She then joined the faculty, as an assistant professor, at the University of Maryland, College Park, for the 1987-88 academic year. In 1988, she rejoined the faculty of the University of Rochester as an assistant professor in the English department. In 1988, Scott's second novel, ''The Closest Possible Union'', was published. Narrated by a teenaged boy, it tells the story of the violent voyage of a
slave ship Slave ships were large cargo ships specially built or converted from the 17th to the 19th century for transporting slaves. Such ships were also known as "Guineamen" because the trade involved human trafficking to and from the Guinea coast ...
. ''Publishers Weekly'' declared that the "
Kafkaesque Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It typi ...
" story "demonstrates conclusively that modern literature has a major new voice". However, the author Robert Houston found the novel disappointing, writing in ''The New York Times'' that it suffered from a disconnect between its language and its material. Scott's third novel, ''Arrogance'', appeared in 1990 to mixed reviews. A fragmented, fictional account inspired by the life of Austrian artist
Egon Schiele Egon Leo Adolf Ludwig Schiele (; 12 June 1890 – 31 October 1918) was an Austrian Expressionist painter. His work is noted for its intensity and its raw sexuality, and for the many self-portraits the artist produced, including nude self-portr ...
, it was criticized in ''Publishers Weekly'' as reading like "an innovative treatise". Writing in ''The New York Times'', the author
Scott Bradfield Scott Michael Bradfield (born 27 April 1955) is an American essayist, critic and fiction writer who resides in London, England. He has taught at the University of California, the University of Connecticut and Kingston University and has reviewed f ...
also classified the work as "more…a treatise than a novel", although he praised its "vivid" use of "sensuous, provocative" material. However, ''Entertainment Weekly'' gave the novel an 'A' grade, and, writing in ''The Washington Post'',
J. D. McClatchy J. D. "Sandy" McClatchy (August 12, 1945 – April 10, 2018) was an American poet, opera librettist and literary critic. He was editor of the ''Yale Review'' and president of The American Academy of Arts and Letters. Life McClatchy was born ...
called it "a convincing portrait of tortured artistic genius and a dazzling literary performance". In 1994, Scott released a collection of stories, ''Various Antidotes''. This was followed by another novel, ''The Manikin'' (1996), a
gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
story set in western New York. In the ''Los Angeles Times'', Anna Mundow praised the novel's "feverish, hermetically sealed atmosphere", although she criticized its portrayal of its characters. Calling it "richly atmospheric", ''Kirkus Reviews'' declared that the novel "splendidly reinforces Scott's reputation as an original and imaginative writer". In ''The New York Times'', Peter Prescott compared Scott's prose to the ''
Metamorphoses The ''Metamorphoses'' ( la, Metamorphōsēs, from grc, μεταμορφώσεις: "Transformations") is a Latin narrative poem from 8 CE by the Roman poet Ovid. It is considered his ''magnum opus''. The poem chronicles the history of the wo ...
'' of
Ovid Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the th ...
. The novel went on to be a finalist for the
Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...
in 1997. In 1999, Scott was appointed the Roswell Smith Burrows Professor of English at the University of Rochester. The following year, she published her fifth novel, ''Make Believe''. She then took a
sabbatical A sabbatical (from the Hebrew: (i.e., Sabbath); in Latin ; Greek: ) is a rest or break from work. The concept of the sabbatical is based on the Biblical practice of ''shmita'' (sabbatical year), which is related to agriculture. According to ...
to live in
Florence, Italy Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico an ...
, where she conducted research and began work on novels set in Italy. These were ''Tourmaline'' (2002) and ''Liberation'' (2005). Another collection of short stories, ''Everybody Loves Somebody'', was published in 2006. Scott's eighth novel, ''Follow Me'', appeared in 2009. ''Kirkus Reviews'' praised its "luminous prose" and "mythic" main character, while ''Publishers Weekly'' admired its "retelling of the archetypal American journey from a female perspective". It was followed by another novel, ''De Potter's Grand Tour'' (2014), which was inspired by the story of Scott's great-grandfather, Armand de Potter, and includes photos and other materials from Scott's family archives. In ''Library Journal'', Neil Hollands called it "a fascinating tale of the dark side of the rags-to-riches story". Scott's tenth novel, ''Careers for Women'', appeared in 2017. A story collection, ''Excuse Me While I Disappear'', appeared in 2021.


Personal life

Scott was married to the poet and scholar
James Longenbach James Longenbach (Sept. 17, 1959 – July 29, 2022) was an Americans, American critic and poet. His early critical work focused on modernist poetry, namely that of Ezra Pound, W.B. Yeats, and Wallace Stevens, but came to include contemporary poetr ...
until his death in 2022. They have two children.


Selected bibliography


Novels

*''Fading, My Parmacheene Belle.'' Ticknor & Fields, 1987. *''The Closest Possible Union''. Ticknor & Fields, 1988. *''Arrogance.'' Linden Press/Simon & Schuster, 1990. *''The Manikin.'' Henry Holt, 1996. *''Make Believe.'' Little, Brown & Co., 2000. *''Tourmaline.'' Little, Brown & Co., 2002. *''Liberation.'' Little, Brown & Co., 2005. *''Follow Me.'' Little, Brown & Co., 2009. *''De Potter's Grand Tour.'' Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014. *''Careers for Women''. Little, Brown & Co., 2017.


Story collections

* ''Various Antidotes.'' Henry Holt, 1994. * ''Everybody Loves Somebody.'' Little, Brown & Co., 2006. * ''Excuse Me While I Disappear''. Little, Brown & Co., 2021.


Work


Form

Scott has published fiction (both novels and short stories) and nonfiction (essays and book reviews). She is best known for fiction of lyrical prose that explores a wide range of subjects and employs a variety of literary techniques. The scholar Anne-Laure Tissut has characterized Scott's writing as displaying "a fascination for the diversity of the world and an awareness of the wealth of literary devices". Among the devices Scott has employed are
magical realism Magical is the adjective for magic. It may also refer to: * Magical (horse) (foaled 2015), Irish Thoroughbred racehorse * "Magical" (song), released in 1985 by John Parr * '' Magical: Disney's New Nighttime Spectacular of Magical Celebrations'', ...
and unreliable narration, and she is noted for her contributions to what the scholar Michael Lackey has called "biofiction", or
biographical fiction When studying literature, biography and its relationship to literature is often a subject of literary criticism, and is treated in several different forms. Two scholarly approaches use biography or biographical approaches to the past as a tool for ...
, a form of literature that "names its protagonist after an actual historical figure" without being bound to the scholarly conventions of history or biography. Scott has done this by crafting fictions centered on historical figures ranging from
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek Antonie Philips van Leeuwenhoek ( ; ; 24 October 1632 – 26 August 1723) was a Dutch microbiologist and microscopist in the Golden Age of Dutch science and technology. A largely self-taught man in science, he is commonly known as " the ...
to Egon Schiele to her own ancestors.


Themes

Scott's work is thematically diverse. Some scholarly attention has been paid to the
feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...
perspective in Scott's novels and their portrayal of women who navigate male-dominated arenas. Critics have also focused on Scott's preoccupation with all facets of creativity, including the psychology of artists, most obviously explored in ''Arrogance,'' and the choices made in the process of realizing a personal vision.


Influences

In interviews, Scott has pointed to the influence of William Faulkner,
Samuel Beckett Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal and tragicomic expe ...
, Maureen Howard, and John Hawkes on her work.


Honors

Scott has received numerous honors for her work. Below are honors she has received for both her body of work and individual works.


Honors for body of work

* Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts (1988) *
MacArthur Foundation Fellowship The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to between 20 and 30 indi ...
(1992) *
Lannan Literary Award for Fiction The Lannan Literary Awards are a series of awards and literary fellowships given out in various fields by the Lannan Foundation. Established in 1989, the awards are meant "to honor both established and emerging writers whose work is of exceptional ...
(1999) *
American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...
, Elected Member (2001) * Santa Maddalena Foundation Fellowship (2007) *Honorary Doctorate,
Trinity College Trinity College may refer to: Australia * Trinity Anglican College, an Anglican coeducational primary and secondary school in , New South Wales * Trinity Catholic College, Auburn, a coeducational school in the inner-western suburbs of Sydney, New ...
(2009) *Bogliasco Foundation Fellowship (2017)


Honors for individual works

* William Peden Prize of ''
The Missouri Review ''The Missouri Review'' is a literary magazine founded in 1978 by the University of Missouri. It publishes fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction quarterly. With its open submission policy, ''The Missouri Review'' receives 12,000 manuscripts ...
'' for "From ''The Closest Possible Union"'' (1987) * Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award of the
American Academy of Arts and Letters The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Its fixed number membership is elected for lifetime appointments. Its headqu ...
for ''Arrogance'' (1991) *
Aga Khan Prize for Fiction The Aga Khan Prize for Fiction was awarded by the editors of ''The Paris Review'' for what they deem to be the best short story published in the magazine in a given year. The last prize was given in 2004. No applications were accepted. The winner ...
of ''
The Paris Review ''The Paris Review'' is a quarterly English-language literary magazine established in Paris in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. In its first five years, ''The Paris Review'' published works by Jack Kerouac, Philip ...
'' for "A Borderline Case" (1992) * Pushcart Prize for "Convicta et Combusta", originally published in '' Conjunctions'' (1993) * The Southern Review Short Fiction Prize for ''Various Antidotes'' (1995) * Ambassador Book Award of the English-Speaking Union for ''Liberation'' (2006) * Pushcart Prize for "The Knowledge Gallery", originally published in ''Conjunctions'' (2016) * Pushcart Prize for "Infidels", originally published in ''Conjunctions'' (2020) In addition, ''Arrogance'' and ''Various Antidotes'' were both finalists for the
PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction is awarded annually by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation to the authors of the year's best works of fiction by living American citizens. The winner receives US$15,000 and each of four runners-up receives US$5000. Fi ...
; ''The Manikin'' was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and ''Tourmaline'' was a finalist for the
Los Angeles Times Book Prize Since 1980, the ''Los Angeles Times'' has awarded a set of annual book prizes. The Prizes currently have nine categories: biography, current interest, fiction, first fiction (the Art Seidenbaum Award added in 1991), history, mystery/thriller ( ...
. Scott's work has been anthologized in ''The'' ''Best American Short Stories,'' ''The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories'', and elsewhere. She has been a visiting professor at
Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...
. She has also been an invited speaker at numerous institutions.


References


Further reading

* Lackey, Michael (editor), ''Conversations with Joanna Scott'', Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2020,


External links

* http://www.joannascottbooks.com/
Joanna Scott's Faculty Page
at the University of Rochester {{DEFAULTSORT:Scott, Joanna 1960 births Living people 20th-century American novelists 21st-century American novelists American women novelists University of Rochester faculty Place of birth missing (living people) People from Rochester, New York MacArthur Fellows 20th-century American women writers 21st-century American women writers Novelists from New York (state) American women academics Trinity College (Connecticut) alumni Brown University alumni