Pritchard, Melissa 1948-

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PRITCHARD, Melissa 1948-

PERSONAL: Born December 12, 1948, in San Mateo, CA; daughter of Clarence John (a comptroller) and Helen Lorraine (a homemaker and volunteer worker; maiden name, Reilly) Brown; married Daniel Hachez, June 30, 1973 (divorced, 1976); married Mark Pritchard (an industrial filmmaker), May 21, 1977 (divorced, 1989); children: (second marriage) Noelle, Caitlin. Ethnicity: "Caucasian." Education: University of California, Santa Barbara, B.A. (comparative religions), 1970; graduate study at University of New Mexico, 1975-76, and Western Washington University, 1976-77; Vermont College, M.F.A., 1995. Politics: Democrat. Religion: Roman Catholic. Hobbies and other interests: Nia, dance form.

ADDRESSES: Home—332 East La Diosa Dr., Tempe, AZ 85282. Office—Department of English, Arizona State University, P.O. Box 870302, Tempe, AZ 85287-0302; fax: 480-965-3451. Agent—Joy Harris, Joy Harris Literary Agency, 156 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Santa Fe Community College, Santa Fe, NM, instructor in creative writing, 1990, 1991; Arizona State University, Tempe, visiting assistant professor of creative writing, 1992-94, assistant professor of English and women's studies, 1994—; currently associate professor and director of M.F.A. program in creative writing; Spalding University, Louisville, KY, faculty, M.F.A. program in creative writing. Taos Children's Theater, codirector and scriptwriter, 1990-91; Santa Fe Literacy Center, coordinator, 1991; Native American Circle, Enid, OK, member of board of directors, 1996—; Taos Art School, member of board of directors, 1996—. Kentucky Women Writers' Conference, guest faculty, 1990-91; Santa Fe Writers' Conference, director, 1991, 1992; New Mexico State University, guest faculty at Writers' Conference, 1992; Writer's Voice, writer in residence, 1996; instructor at fiction workshops, including presentations at Vermont College, Arizona State University's annual creative writing conference, Taos Art School, Yavapai College, Taos Institute of the Arts, University of Arizona, and Dickinson College; judge for writing awards; book reviewers; gives readings from her works.

MEMBER: Associated Writing Programs, Authors Guild, Authors League of America.

AWARDS, HONORS: Fiction awards, Illinois Arts Council, 1980, for "The Housekeeper," 1981, for "A Dying Man," 1983, for "La Bete: A Figure Study," 1988, for "Taking Hold of Renee"; fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts, 1982; James D. Phelan Award, San Francisco Foundation, 1982, for a collection of twelve stories; outstanding writer citation, Pushcart Prize competition, 1983, for "Companions"; International PEN Syndicated Fiction Project winner, 1985, for "With Wings Cross Water"; fellowship, Illinois Arts Council, 1986; Flannery O'Connor Short Fiction Award, University of Georgia Press, 1987, and Carl Sandburg Literary Arts Award for fiction, Friends of Chicago Public Library, 1988, James Phelan Award, and honorary citation, PEN/Nelson Algren Award, all for Spirit Seizures; Great Lakes Colleges New Writers honorable mention, 1988; outstanding writer citation, Pushcart Prizes XVI, 1992, for "El Ojito del Muerto"; Claudia Ortese Memorial Lecture Prize in North American Literature, University of Florence, 1995; Pushcart Prize, 1996, for story "The Instinct for Bliss"; Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, 1996, for collection The Instinct for Bliss; fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts; writer-in-residence fellowship, Writers' Voice YMCA; Howard Foundation fellowship, Brown University, 1999; Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, 1999, for Selene of the Spirits; O. Henry Award, 2000, for "Salve Regina"; Pushcart Prize, 2001, for "Funktionslust"; NPR's summer reading list, 2002, for Disappearing Ingenue.

WRITINGS:

Spirit Seizures (stories), University of Georgia Press (Athens, GA), 1987.

(Editor, with Diane Williams and Anne Brashler) The American Story: Best of Story Quarterly, Cane Hill Press (New York, NY), 1990.

Phoenix (novel), Cane Hill Press (New York, NY), 1991.

The Instinct for Bliss (short stories), Zoland Books (Cambridge, MA), 1995.

Selene of the Spirits, G. Braziller (New York, NY), 1998.

Disappearing Ingenue: The Misadventures of Eleanor Stoddard, Doubleday (New York, NY), 2002.

Work represented in numerous textbooks and anthologies, including O. Henry Prize Stories, 1984; Prize Stories 2000: The O. Henry Awards; The Literary Ghost: Great Contemporary Ghost Stories, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1991; Three Genres: Fiction, Poetry, and Drama, Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1992; The Flannery O'Connor Award: Selected Stories, University of Georgia Press, 1992; Walking the Twilight: Women Writers of the Southwest, Northland Publishing (Menomonie, WI), 1993; Pushcart Prize XX: Best of the Small Presses, Pushcart Press (Wainscott, NY), 1995; Mothers: Twenty Stories of Contemporary Motherhood, North Point Press (Berkeley, CA), 1996; American Gothic Tales, edited by Joyce Carol Oates, Dutton (New York, NY), 1996; and Canadian Fiction Anthology, 1997. Contributor of stories, essays, and reviews to periodicals, including Indiana Review, Southern Review, Epoch, Ontario Review, Prairie Schooner, American Voice, Paris Review, Southern Review, Story, Kenyon Review, Blackbird, and Washington Square. Story Quarterly, coeditor, 1984-88, advisory editor, 1988—; guest editor, Taos Review, 1992.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Late Bloomer, a novel for Doubleday, forthcoming March, 2004.

SIDELIGHTS: Melissa Pritchard is an award-winning short story writer and novelist. In her novel Selene of the Spirits she draws upon her research into the Victorian-era obsession with contacting the spirit world in a story that is loosely based upon the life of Florence Cook, a famous British medium of the late nineteenth century. Teenager Selene Cook discovers her ability to contact the spirit world while still a schoolgirl; she is soon taken up by a wealthy philanthropist and introduced to established spiritualists of the day, who teach her how to augment her natural abilities in performances that offer audiences what they expect. This kind of trickery, of course, leads to Selene's exposure as a fraud. When she challenges Sir William Herapath, an important scientist, to either prove her a fake or validate her authenticity, the two fall in love. Their romance, however, leads to the downfall of both, for he is already married and twice her age. "Pritchard enlivens her tale with characters who, for all their interest in the other world, are rich and complex human beings," remarked Caroline M. Hallsworth in Library Journal. Other reviewers likewise praised Pritchard's well-rounded characters, both major and minor, and remarked on her skillful blend of a melodramatic plot with intriguing theses on the role of women in Victorian society, as well as on the war that was beginning to rage between science and religion. "Meticulous research, elegant style and genial acceptance of human nature make . . . Pritchard a compelling narrator," wrote a Publishers Weekly critic.

Pritchard's next novel, Disappearing Ingenue: The Misadventures of Eleanor Stoddard, is a collection of eight interconnected stories about a person who is always striving to be good, and always failing. From a serious sixth-grader who sets herself the task of reading about the Holocaust over the summer but who willingly becomes the dupe of her compulsive liar of a best friend, to her first cotillion, where Eleanor retreats into the bathroom to say the rosary but fails to save her friend from being seduced, to a frustrating marriage in which her daughters' Nancy Drew novels inspire her investigations into her husband's infidelity, Pritchard's protagonist is the picture of good intentions gone awry. "With each story the collection gains momentum," declared a contributor to Publishers Weekly. The critic particularly praised the final two episodes, including "Funktionslust," which won the Pushcart Prize, and ends the volume on a note of surreal high adventure, with Eleanor in the jungles of Central America accompanied by a rescued primate.

Pritchard once told CA: "Until I was thirty years old, I did not attempt, with any great commitment, to write fiction. I had been an actress, a waitress, a drama teacher, a secretary, a plant nursery worker, an organic gardener, a house cleaner . . . and still am a mother. I am fascinated by mythology and science, by things of the physical world, by things of the spirit. Writing fiction has become my center as well as my path outward."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, November 15, 1998, Nancy Pearl, review of Selene of the Spirits, p. 568.

Glimmer Train, summer, 2003, Leslie A. Wooten, interview with Melissa Pritchard.

Kirkus Reviews, September 15, 1998, review of Selene of the Spirits, p. 1320.

Library Journal, October 1, 1998, Caroline M. Hallsworth, review of Selene of the Spirits, p. 135.

Metro (Phoenix, AZ), June/July, 2003, interview with Melissa Pritchard.

New York Times Book Review, November 22, 1987; January 10, 1999, Nora Krug, review of Selene of the Spirits, p. 16.

Publishers Weekly, September 21, 1998, review of Selene of the Spirits, p. 73; March 25, 2002, review of Disappearing Ingenue: The Misadventures of Eleanor Stoddard, p. 38.

San Francisco Review of Books, September, 1995.

Story Quarterly, fall, 1997.

World & I, March, 1999, review of Selene of the Spirits, p. 273.