Melissa Bank
Melissa Bank was an American novelist and writer, born in Boston on October 11, 1960, and educated at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and Cornell University.
Her writing earned early recognition when she won the Nelson Algren Award for short fiction in 1993, a distinction that preceded the publication of her two books. The first of those books was The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing, and the second was The Wonder Spot. Alongside her work as a writer, Bank taught at Stony Brook University, where she worked with students in a formal academic setting.
Over the course of her career she published two books in the English language. The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing is the notable work most closely associated with her name, and The Wonder Spot stands as her second published title. That she produced two books rather than many reflects a measured relationship with the work, and her teaching position at Stony Brook University placed her in sustained contact with writers developing their own craft even as she continued her own.
Bank died on August 2, 2022, in East Hampton, at the age of sixty-one. Her career moved from the early distinction of the Nelson Algren Award for short fiction through two published novels written in English. The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing remains the title most closely associated with her name.
Quotes by Melissa Bank
Melissa Bank's insights on:
Nice,′ I say, realizing only afterward that I’ve mimicked her, a bad habit of mine; I’m like one of those animals that imitates its predators to survive.
When he takes off his shirt, I see that his shoulders are narrow and his chest almost hairless and almost concave. For a second I’m disappointed but right away I think, Grow up; this is the chest of a husband.
I hate weddings,′ she says. ‘They make me feel so unmarried. Actually, even brushing my teeth makes me feel unmarried.
There are things that two people say in the middle of the night That don’t make sense to a third at breakfast.
Before college, I hadn’t voluntarily read anything that might be called literature; I didn’t think I’d understand it; I never seemed to understand my English teacher’s interpretations of what we read.
I never expected anyone in my family to change, and especially not my father, who changed first and most profoundly: He died.
You see yourself through his eyes, as The Generic Woman, the skirted symbol of the ladies room door.
I saw my life in scale: it was just my life. It was not momentous, and only now did I recognize that it had once seemed so to me; that was while my father was watching.
Oliver Biddle was who you became if you couldn’t find anyone to love except your parents.