Jeffrey Eugenides

Jeffrey Eugenides (born March 8, 1960, Detroit, Michigan, U.S.) is an American novelist and short-story writer who has earned acclaim as a gifted storyteller, known for his versatility, compassion, and ability to create vivid worlds. He often explores themes involving coming of age and self-discovery, perhaps most notably in his novel Middlesex (2002), which won a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Early life and education

Eugenides is the youngest of three sons born to Wanda (Tate) Eugenides, who was of English and Irish ancestry, and Constantine Eugenides, a Greek American. The family lived in Detroit before moving to the affluent suburb of Grosse Pointe. The area features prominently in his later work. Eugenides attended the private University Liggett School there, and at age 15 he decided to become a writer after reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) by James Joyce.

Eugenides later studied at Brown University, though he took a year off to travel across Europe and volunteer at Mother Teresa’s hospice in Calcutta. After graduating from Brown in 1983, he earned a master’s degree (1986) in English and creative writing from Stanford University. Eugenides stayed in California, and he characterized his time in the state as his “lost years,” since he did not publish anything.

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Writing career: The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex

In 1988 Eugenides moved to Brooklyn and began working as an executive secretary at the Academy of American Poets, earning $17,000 a year. During this time he became friends with a number of other struggling writers, including David Foster Wallace and Jonathan Franzen. Eugenides had a breakthrough in 1990 when The Paris Review published his short story “The Virgin Suicides,” which won the literary journal’s Aga Khan Prize the following year. Inspired, Eugenides began expanding the story into a novel. He maintained a disciplined schedule and allegedly began writing surreptitiously during his work hours at the academy, which resulted in his being fired. Eugenides used the unemployment checks to focus on completing the book.

The Virgin Suicides was published in 1993. The dreamlike novel, which is set in 1970s suburban Detroit, centres on five teenaged sisters who all die by suicide. In what was then an innovative choice, Eugenides wrote the novel entirely in the first-person plural; the collective “we” is a group of neighbourhood boys who obsess over the enigmatic sisters. The Virgin Suicides was critically acclaimed, noted for its astute observations about the loss of innocence and the end of adolescence while also capturing the declining fortunes of Detroit. In 1999 the book was adapted into a feature film by director Sofia Coppola.

From 1999 to 2004 Eugenides lived in Berlin, where he was a fellow at the American Academy. While there the author wrote his second novel, Middlesex (2002). Spanning some eight decades, the ambitious book chronicles the coming of age of Calliope Stephanides, an intersex Greek American. It traces his struggles with gender confusion while growing up as a girl named Callie before eventually becoming a man and adopting the name Cal. His story is juxtaposed with that of his paternal grandparents, a brother and sister who eventually marry after being forced to flee the Greco-Turkish War of 1921–22. With its perceptive—and often humorous—exploration of identity, gender, and the immigrant experience, Middlesex garnered widespread praise and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2003. In addition, the novel was chosen for Oprah Winfrey’s book club in 2007, which introduced Middlesex and Eugenides to a wider audience.

Later books: The Marriage Plot and Fresh Complaint

In 2007 Eugenides joined the faculty of Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts. Four years later he published The Marriage Plot. Partly drawing on his experiences at Brown University and Mother Teresa’s hospice, the book follows three young college graduates caught in a love triangle. The novel was praised for its compassionate and realistic portrayal of love and self-discovery. In 2017 Eugenides released Fresh Complaint, a collection of short stories written over some three decades. The following year he left Princeton to join New York University’s Creative Writing Program as a tenured full professor and as the Lewis and Loretta Glucksman Professor in American Letters. In 2018 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

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