Allegra Goodman (born 1967) is an American author based in

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Greater Boston, Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 United States Census, 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most ...

. Goodman wrote and illustrated her first novel at the age of seven.

Biography

Allegra Goodman was born in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. Kings County is the most populous Administrative divisions of New York (state)#County, county in the State of New York, ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

, and raised in

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only ...

. The daughter of Lenn and Madeleine Goodman,"Allegra Goodman." ''Contemporary Authors Online''. Detroit: Gale, 2011. Retrieved via ''Biography in Context'' database, 2017-09-22. she was brought up as a Conservative Jew.
/ref> Her mother, who died in 1996, was a professor of

genetics Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinian friar worki ...

and

women's studies Women's studies is an academic field that draws on feminist and interdisciplinary methods to place women's lives and experiences at the center of study, while examining social and cultural constructs of gender; systems of privilege and oppress ...

, then assistant vice president at the

University of Hawaii at Manoa A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase ''universitas magistrorum et scholarium'', which ...

for many years, before moving on to

Vanderbilt University Vanderbilt University (informally Vandy or VU) is a private research university in Nashville, Tennessee. Founded in 1873, it was named in honor of shipping and rail magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided the school its initial $1-million ...

in the 1990s. Her father, Lenn E. Goodman, is a professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt. Goodman graduated from Punahou School in 1985. She then went on to

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

, where she earned an A.B. degree and met her husband,

David Karger David Ron Karger (born May 1, 1967) is a professor of computer science and a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory ( CSAIL) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Education Karger received a Bachelor of A ...

. Both were regulars at Harvard Hillel, and prayed in Harvard Hillel Orthodox

Minyan In Judaism, a ''minyan'' ( he, מניין \ מִנְיָן ''mīnyān'' , lit. (noun) ''count, number''; pl. ''mīnyānīm'' ) is the quorum of ten Jewish adults required for certain religious obligations. In more traditional streams of Jud ...

. They then went on to do graduate work at Stanford University, where Goodman earned a Ph.D. degree in English literature, in 1996. Goodman's younger sister, Paula Fraenkel, is an

oncologist Oncology is a branch of medicine that deals with the study, treatment, diagnosis and prevention of cancer. A medical professional who practices oncology is an ''oncologist''. The name's etymological origin is the Greek word ὄγκος (''ó ...

. Fraenkel's experience in research labs is one of the inspirations for Goodman's 2006 novel ''Intuition''. Her short story "La Vita Nuova" was selected for

The Best American Short Stories 2011 The Best American Short Stories 2011, a volume in the '' Best American Short Stories series'', was edited by Heidi Pitlor and by guest editor Geraldine Brooks.Pitlor, Heidi and Brooks, Geraldine (editors), ''The Best American Short Stories 2011'' ...

and was broadcast on Public Radio International's Selected Shorts in February 2012. Goodman and Karger live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Karger is a professor in computer science at MIT. They have four children, three boys and a girl.

Awards and honors

* 1991, winner, Whiting Award for Fiction * 2009, shortlisted,

Wellcome Book Prize Wellcome Book Prize (2009–2019 — paused) is an annual British literary award sponsored by Wellcome Trust. In keeping with the vision and goals of Wellcome Trust, the Book Prize "celebrates the topics of health and medicine in literature", inc ...

, ''Intuition''

Bibliography

Novels

* ''

Kaaterskill Falls Kaaterskill Falls is a two-stage waterfall on Spruce Creek in the eastern Catskill Mountains of New York, between the hamlets of Haines Falls and Palenville in Greene County. The two cascades total 260 feet (79 m) in height, making Kaaterski ...

'' (The Dial Press 1998; paperback Dial Press Trade Paperback 1999) , * ''Paradise Park'' (The Dial Press 2001, Dial Press Trade Paperback 2002) , * ''

Intuition Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without recourse to conscious reasoning. Different fields use the word "intuition" in very different ways, including but not limited to: direct access to unconscious knowledge; unconscious cognition; ...

'' (The Dial Press 2006), * ''The Other Side of the Island'' (New York: Razorbill, 2008) * ''The Cookbook Collector'' (The Dial Press 2010) * ''The Chalk Artist: A Novel'' (The Dial Press 2017) * '' Sam: A Novel'' (The Dial Press 2023)

Short story collections

* ''Total Immersion'' (Harper & Row 1989; paperback

Dial Press The Dial Press was a publishing house founded in 1923 by Lincoln MacVeagh. The Dial Press shared a building with '' The Dial'' and Scofield Thayer worked with both. The first imprint was issued in 1924. Authors included Elizabeth Bowen, W. ...

Trade Paperback 1998) , * '' The Family Markowitz'' (Farrar Straus & Giroux 1996; softcover Washington Square Press 1997) ,

Online fiction

References

External links

Allegra Goodman's webpage

Allegra Goodman profile
a
Bookreporter.com

Profile at The Whiting Foundation

2006 MSNBC article on Allegra Goodman

interview in ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...

''
Allegra Goodman
entry o
The Literary Encyclopedia
{{DEFAULTSORT:Goodman, Allegra 1967 births Living people 20th-century American novelists 20th-century American short story writers 20th-century American women writers 21st-century American Jews 21st-century American novelists 21st-century American short story writers 21st-century American women writers American women novelists American women short story writers Baalei teshuva Harvard University alumni Jewish American novelists Jewish women writers The New Yorker people Novelists from Hawaii Novelists from Massachusetts Novelists from New York (state) Punahou School alumni Stanford University alumni Writers from Brooklyn Writers from Cambridge, Massachusetts