Jeffrey Eugenides

Jeffrey Eugenides was born on March 8, 1960, in Detroit, Michigan. He is the youngest of three sons, with his mother being of English and Irish descent and his father, Constantine Eugenides, being Greek American. The family resided in Detroit before relocating to the Grosse Pointe suburb, an area that later influenced his literary works. Eugenides attended the private University Liggett School. At the age of 15, inspired by James Joyce’s “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” he decided to pursue a career as a writer. He furthered his education at Brown University, taking a year to travel across Europe and volunteer at Mother Teresa’s hospice in Calcutta before graduating in 1983. He then earned a master’s degree in English and creative writing from Stanford University in 1986.

Eugenides moved to Brooklyn in 1988, working as an executive secretary at the Academy of American Poets. During this period, he connected with other writers, including David Foster Wallace and Jonathan Franzen. His writing career gained momentum in 1990 when The Paris Review published his short story “The Virgin Suicides,” which received the Aga Khan Prize in 1991. He subsequently expanded this story into his first novel, “The Virgin Suicides,” published in 1993. This novel, set in 1970s suburban Detroit, received critical acclaim and was later adapted into a feature film by director Sofia Coppola in 1999.

From 1999 to 2004, Eugenides lived in Berlin as a fellow at the American Academy. His second novel, “Middlesex,” was published in 2002 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2003. This extensive novel explores themes of identity, gender, and the immigrant experience through the story of an intersex Greek American. “Middlesex” was also selected for Oprah Winfrey’s book club in 2007. Eugenides joined Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts faculty in 2007 and published his third novel, “The Marriage Plot,” in 2011. In 2017, he released “Fresh Complaint,” a collection of short stories. The following year, he moved to New York University’s Creative Writing Program as a tenured full professor and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.