Melissa Fay Greene is the author of six books of nonfiction: Praying for Sheetrock (1991), The Temple Bombing (1996), Last Man Out (2003), There Is No Me Without You (2006), No Biking in the House Without a Helmet (2011), and The Underdogs (2016). She is the Kirk Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, GA, and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Grady College of Journalism of the University of Georgia.
Melissa’s work has been translated into a dozen languages and has been honored with a 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Book Award nominations, a National Book Critics Circle Award nomination, the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize, the Southern Book Critics Circle Award, the ACLU National Civil Liberties Award, the Hadassah Myrtle Wreath Award, the Lillian Smith Book Award, Elle Magazine’s Readers’ Prize, the Salon Book Prize, a Lyndhurst Foundation Fellowship, the Georgia Governor’s Award for the Arts & Humanities, an honorary doctorate from Emory University, and induction into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.
She has contributed to The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, New York Magazine, Newsweek, LIFE, MS, CNN.com, Huffington Post, and other periodicals. Praying For Sheetrock was named one of the Top 100 Works of American Journalism (Links to an external site.) of the 20th century and appears on Entertainment Weekly‘s list of “The New Classics–The 100 Best Books of the Last 25 Years.”
A native of Macon, Georgia, childhood resident of Dayton, Ohio, and 1975 graduate of Oberlin College, Melissa and her husband, criminal defense attorney Don Samuel, live in Atlanta and have nine children, one son-in-law, two daughters-in-law, one grandson and one granddaughter!
[almost the whole family, 2018]
A FEW MEDIA PROFILES:
PRINT:
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “Mom, Times Nine” 5/7/11
The Christian Science Monitor, reprinted by The Seattle Times: “Melissa Fay Greene’s ‘Biking’: It’s A Fun Ride,” 5/20/11
Publishers Weekly, Interview with Melissa Fay Greene, 3/21/2011
Powell’s Books Interviews: “The Book That Changed Melissa Fay Greene’s Life”
TV & VIDEO:
Macmillan Books/Farrar, Straus & Giroux: Melissa Fay Greene
ForaTV: Rescuing Africa’s Children
CSpan2: There Is No Me Without You
RADIO:
The Leonard Lopate Show: No Biking in the House, May 2011
Talk of the Nation: There Is No Me Without You
All Things Considered: Adopting a Baby from Africa, Famous or Not, 2006
NPR: “Adopting A Baby from Africa, Famous or Not,”2006
The National Infertility & Adoption Education Network: Adoptive Parenting: A Conversation with Melissa Fay Greene
The Tavis Smiley Show: Last Man Out, 2003
All Things Considered: The Temple Bombing,1996