Alice Adams

Who was Alice Adams?

Alice Adams was an American novelist, short story writer, and university professor.

Alice Adams was born in Fredericksburg, Virginia, grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and attended Radcliffe College, graduating in 1946. She married Mark Linenthal, with whom she lived in Paris for one year, followed by a move to Palo Alto where he attended Stanford University. Their only child, artist Peter Linenthal, was born in 1951. During the early 1950s, a psychiatrist told her she should stay married but stop writing; she ignored that advice and finally sold her short story, Winter Rain, to Charm magazine. Soon after that her marriage broke up, and she spent many years as a single mother, working as a secretary. Her first novel was, Careless Love; in 1969 she began publishing stories in The New Yorker and received growing recognition. Her domestic partner from 1965-1987 was interior designer Robert McNie; she enjoyed close friendships with authors Max Steele, Ella Leffland, and Diane Johnson, and editors Frances Kiernan, William Abrahams, and Victoria Wilson. She wrote eleven novels, including the bestseller Superior Women, but is best known and most admired for her short stories, collected in Beautiful Girl, To See You Again, Return Trips, After You've Gone, and The Last Lovely City, as well a in the posthumous selection called The Stories of Alice Adams.