Alice Sebold Biography

Quick Facts

NAME: Alice Sebold
OCCUPATION: Educator, Author, Poet
BIRTH DATE: September 06, 1963 (Age: 49)
EDUCATION: Syracuse University
PLACE OF BIRTH: Madison, Wisconsin
Full Name: Alice Sebold
ZODIAC SIGN: Virgo

Best Known For

Alice Sebold is an American writer and best-selling author of the book, The Lovely Bones, which has been hailed the most successful debut novel since Gone with the Wind.

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Alice Sebold

APA Style

Alice Sebold. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 03:36, May 21, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/alice-sebold-20702765.

Harvard Style

Alice Sebold. [Internet]. 2013. The Biography Channel website. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/alice-sebold-20702765 [Accessed 21 May 2013].

MLA Style

"Alice Sebold." 2013. The Biography Channel website. May 21 2013, 03:36 http://www.biography.com/people/alice-sebold-20702765.

MHRA Style

"Alice Sebold," The Biography Channel website, 2013, http://www.biography.com/people/alice-sebold-20702765 [accessed May 21, 2013].

Chicago Style

"Alice Sebold," The Biography Channel website, http://www.biography.com/people/alice-sebold-20702765 (accessed May 21, 2013).

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Alice Sebold [Internet]. The Biography Channel website; 2013 [cited 2013 May 21] Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/alice-sebold-20702765.

Bluebook Style

Alice Sebold, http://www.biography.com/people/alice-sebold-20702765 (last visited May 21, 2013).

AMA Style

Alice Sebold. The Biography Channel website. 2013. Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/alice-sebold-20702765. Accessed May 21, 2013.

She graduated with an MFA in 1998.

Commercial Success

The story of Sebold's life and rape became the subject of her first book, a memoir called Lucky. Its name was inspired by the policeman who'd remarked that she was fortunate to be alive following her attack.

Broader fame came in 2002 when The Lovely Bones, a revised and edited incarnation of Sebold's earlier novel about the rape and murder of a young girl, was published. The book, whose narrator tells her story from beyond the grave, shot to the top of most "best" lists in 2002, earning ebullient praise from critics and outpacing the sales from works from more established authors, like Tom Clancy and Stephen King. Some even dared to call it the most successful debut novel since Gone with the Wind.

In addition, the book earned Sebold the Bram Stoker Award for First Novel in 2002 and the American Booksellers Association Book of the Year Award for Adult Fiction the following year. In 2009, a film version of The Lovely Bones, starring Mark Wahlberg and Susan Sarandon, was released.

Five years after The Lovely Bones first hit bookshelves, Sebold published her second novel, Almost Noon, which tells the story of the murder of an elderly woman by her suburban daughter in a fit of rage.