Melissa Fay Greene

Melissa Fay Greene

Melissa Fay Greene (born December 30, 1952) is an American nonfiction author. A 1975 graduate of Oberlin College, Greene is the author of five books of nonfiction, a two-time National Book Award finalist, recipient of an honorary doctorate from Emory University in 2010, and a 2011 inductee into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.^[1]

Life

Born in Macon, Georgia, Melissa Green lives in Atlanta with her husband, Don Samuel, a criminal defense attorney and partner in the law firm Garland, Samuel & Loeb. Married in 1979, they are the parents of nine children: Molly, 29, Seth, 26, Lee, 23, Lily, 18, Fisseha ("Sol"), 17, Daniel, 16, Jesse, 16, Helen, 14, and Yosef, 13. The first four children were born into the family; Jesse was adopted from Bulgaria in 1999; Helen, Fisseha, and brothers Daniel and Yosef were adopted from Ethiopia in 2002, 2004, and 2007. Daniel and Yosef's photographs, from years prior to their adoption, and before the author knew they were to become her sons, appear in There is No Me Without You.

Molly Samuel, who graduated from Oberlin College in 2004 with a B.A. in Ancient Greek, lives in San Francisco where she freelances for NPR-affiliate stations KQED] and KALW as a producer, reporter, and arts critic; she was named a 2009-2010 Middlebury Environmental Journalism Fellow and is producing a radio series on California's Islands. Seth Samuel, who graduated from the Oberlin Conservatory in 2007 with a Bachelors in Music, and in 2009 from NYU with a Masters in Scoring for Film & Multimedia, also lives in San Francisco; he is an audio engineer at KALW; he scores the popular online cooking show, Economy Bites. Lee Samuel is a senior at the Rafael Recanati International School of the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzlia, Israel, studying global conflict and development. Lily Samuel, a 2010 recipient of a gold medal in photography from The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards is a freshman at Oberlin College. The younger five children live at home, playing a lot of soccer and basketball, hosting many sleepover friends, and sometimes expressing disappointment with what their mother has made for dinner, particularly the meatloaf.

Publications

Praying for Sheetrock

Published in 1991, Praying for Sheetrock is the true story of the often-criminal heyday of the good old boys in McIntosh County, Georgia on the rural coast of Georgia and the rise of civil rights there, won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award,^[2] the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize,^[3] the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award,^[4] the Quality Paperback Book Club New Visions Award,^[5] was a finalist for the National Book Award^[6] and the National Book Critics Circle Award^[7] and was named one of the 100 best works of American journalism of the 20th century by the journalism faculty of New York University.^[8]

The Temple Bombing

The Temple Bombing (1996) investigates an incident of domestic terrorism during the era of "massive resistance" to desegregation in Atlanta in the 1950s with an attack on a Jewish synagogue called The Temple.^[9] The book was a National Book Award finalist^[10] and winner of the Southern Book Critics Circle Award,^[11] the Georgia Author of the Year Award of the Georgia Writers Association, the Georgia Historical Society Award,^[12] the Hadassah Myrtle Wreath Award, the Salon Book Award, and the American Civil Liberties Union National Civil Liberties Award.

Last Man Out

Last Man Out (2002) tells the story of the 1958 Springhill mining disaster in Springhill, Nova Scotia. It was named a best book of the year by the Chicago Tribune, the Globe and Mail, the Cox newspaper chain, and the New York Public Library.

There Is No Me Without You: One Woman’s Odyssey to Save Her Country’s Children

This 2006 book illuminates the Ethiopian orphan crisis caused by the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa through the portrait of a middle-aged Ethiopian foster mother and the dozens of children crossing her threshold. It was winner of Elle Magazine’s Elle’s Lettres Readers Prize,^[13] a finalist for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, an American Library Association Notable Book and for Booksense, and named a Best Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly,^[14] Christian Science Monitor, Entertainment Weekly, Chicago Tribune, and The Atlanta Constitution. There Is No Me Without You has been translated into 15 languages.^[15]

No Biking in the House without a Helmet

This light-hearted family memoir about life with nine children from three continents, was published in May 2011 by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Reviewers for NPR, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post were unanimous in their enthusiasm.^{[16] [17][18] [19]}

Greene has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, Life Magazine, Good Housekeeping, The Atlantic, Readers Digest, The Wilson Quarterly, Redbook, and Salon.com. She was a 2010 recipient of an honorary doctorate from Emory University.

References

1. ^ Georgia Writers Hall of Fame
2. ^ Robert F. Kennedy Book Award
3. ^ Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize
4. ^ Anisfield-Wolf Book Award
5. ^ Quality Paperback Book Club New Visions Award
6. ^ National Book Award
7. ^ National Book Critics Circle Award
8. ^ [1] and one of "The New Classics: Entertainment Weekly's Best 100 Books of the Last 25 Years"
9. ^ The Temple
10. ^ National Book Award
11. ^ Southern Book Critics Circle Award
12. ^ Georgia Historical Society Award
13. ^ Elle’s Lettres Readers Prize, Elle Magazine
14. ^ Best Book of the Year, Publishers Weekly
15. ^ www.ThereIsNoMeWithoutYou.com
16. ^ NPR review
17. ^ The Atlanta Journal-Constitution review
18. ^ Chicago Tribune review
19. ^ The Washington Post review

External links

• www.MelissaFayGreene.com
• Molly Samuel's blog for Middlebury Environmental Fellowship
• Seth Samuel's website with musical compositions

Persondata
Name	Greene, Melissa Fay
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Date of birth	December 30, 1952
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Date of death
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