Andrea Lee (author)

Andrea Lee, author of novels and memoirs. Her stories are often international in setting and explore questions of racial and national identity.[1]

For the mixed martial artist, see Andrea Lee (fighter).

Early life

Andrea Lee was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as the youngest of three children in a middle-class family; their father was a Baptist minister and their mother was an elementary school teacher. Lee was educated at the private[2] Baldwin School in Bryn Mawr.

After earning a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in English from Harvard University's Radcliffe College,[2] Lee lived in Russia for a year (1978–79) with her first husband. She kept a diary of observations of the people and culture, and drew from that for her first book, a memoir titled Russian Journal (1981). It was nominated for a National Book Award.[3]

Career

After returning to the United States, Lee worked for several years a staff writer on The New Yorker.[2] She is now a contract writer for the magazine. She has also been published in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, Vogue, Time, The Oxford American, and the textbook Elements of Literature.

Her short stories have been anthologized, including "Winter Barley" in The Best American Short Stories 1993, "Brothers and Sisters Around the World" in The Best American Short Stories 2001 and "Anthropology" in The New Granta Book of the American Short Story (2007, edited by Richard Ford).

Her first novel, Sarah Phillips, was published in 1984. It has semi-autobiographical elements, featuring an African-American woman from Philadelphia who marries a white man met at Harvard, and travels with him to Russia.

Her collection of short stories, Interesting Women: Stories (2001), featured African-American women abroad, especially in Italy. She has explored points of view of educated young women from privileged backgrounds, negotiating European societies and questions of race and class.

Her novel Lost Hearts in Italy: A Novel (2006), also featured Americans in Europe.

Personal life

Since 1992 Lee has lived in Torino, Italy. She is married to an Italian man and they have two children.[4]

Selected works
  • Russian Journal, 1981 (nominated for a National Book Award for Nonfiction)[4]
  • Sarah Phillips (novel) 1984
  • Interesting Women: Stories, 2002 (translated into Italian and published in Italy)
  • Lost Hearts in Italy: A Novel, 2006
  • "Anthropology" (short story), 2002
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References
  1. Gary Sheyngart, "The Curiosity of Sisters", New Yorker, 13 October 2008
  2. Robert Fikes, "Lee, Andrea (1953– )", BlackPast,org.
  3. Margaret Busby (ed.), "Andrea Lee", in Daughters of Africa, Jonathan Cape, 1992, p. 851.
  4. Milena Vercellino, "Andrea Lee" Archived 2008-10-11 at the Wayback Machine. Interview in The American Magazine, 11 November 2006.
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