So We Read On (Corrigan)

Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—N/A
• Education—B.A. from Fordham University; M.A., Ph.D, University of Pennsylvania
• Awards—Edgar Award for Criticism
• Currently—lives in Washington, D.C.


Maureen Corrigan is an American journalist, author and literary critic. She writes for the "Book World" section of the Washington Post, and has been a book critic on the NPR radio program Fresh Air for nearly 20 years. She is the author of So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures (2014) and Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books (2005).

Corrigan holds a B.A. from Fordham University as well as an M.A. and Ph.D from the University of Pennsylvania and is Critic in Residence and a lecturer in English at Georgetown University. Her specialist subjects include 19th-century British literature, women's literature (with a special focus on autobiographies), popular culture, detective fiction, contemporary American literature, and Anglo-Irish literature.

In addition to her work with the Washington Post and Fresh Air, Corrigan's essays and reviews have appeared in the Village Voice, New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, The Nation, New York Observer, and Salon.

Along with Robin Winks, she was an associate editor of and contributor to Mystery & Suspense Fiction (1999), a work which won the Edgar Award for Criticism from Mystery Writers of America in 1999.

Corrigan lives in Washington, DC with her husband and daughter.

Books
So We Read On
Corrigan investigates what has made Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby endure over the years. She explores archives, high school classrooms, even the Long Island Sound. Her revelations include Gatsby's surprising debt to hard-boiled crime fiction, Gatsby's rocky path to recognition as a "classic," and the book's profound commentaries on the national themes of race, class, and gender.

Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading
Corrigan reviews the books that most influenced her personally, books that fall into three non-canonical genres—female extreme-adventure tales (narratives recounting "private tests of endurance" in women's lives), hard-boiled detective novels, and Catholic-martyr narratives.  (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/29/2014.)