Alan Lelchuk
Encyclopedia
Alan Lelchuk is a novelist, professor
, and editor
from Brooklyn
, New York
. He did his undergraduate work at Brooklyn College
and received his Ph.D. from Stanford University
in 1965. His novels are American Mischief, Miriam at Thirty-Four, Shrinking: The Beginning of My Own Ending, Miriam in Her Forties, Brooklyn Boy, Playing the Game, and Ziff: A Life? He co-edited 8 Great Hebrew Short Novels and has written, for young adults, On Home Ground. His work has been translated into more than half a dozen foreign language
s, including Danish, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish.
His short fiction has appeared in such publications as Transatlantic Review
, The Atlantic, Modern Occasions, The Boston Globe Magazine, and Partisan Review
. Significant critical studies on Lelchuk have been Philip Roth
in Esquire
, Wilfrid Sheed
in Book-of-the-Month Club News
, Bejmain DeMott in The Atlantic, Mordechai Richler in the Chicago Tribune
, Robert Towers in The New York Times
, and Steven Birkets in The New Republic
.
He began teaching at Brandeis University
in 1966, was Visiting Writer for two years at Amherst College
, from 1982–1984, and has been a member of the Dartmouth College
faculty since 1985.
Some awards, honors, and citations include: a Yaddo
Foundation Grant in 1968, 1969, 1971, and 1973, a MacDowell Colony
Fellowship in 1969 and 1974, a Guggenheim Fellowship
in Fiction in 1976-1977, and Fulbright Writer-in-Residence at the University of Haifa
, Israel
in 1986-1987. In 1999-2000 he was the recipient of the Otto Salgo Chair in American Literature and Writing at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) in Budapest
, Hungary
and in 2003-2004 he received a Fulbright Scholar's Grant and taught at the International University of Moscow. Since 2005, he is a Fulbright Senior Specialist Professor, giving seminars in fiction writing and American Literature at Moscow State University
, Universita di Napoli (Naples
, Italy
), and Die Freie Universität, Berlin.
He has also served as a visiting professor at the University of Rome, New York City College, and been in residence at Mishkenot Sha'ananim in Jerusalem. He has given readings and lectures at numerous institutions such as Harvard University
, Yale University
, Dartmouth College
, Brandeis University
, the Boston Public Library
, Boston University
, Amherst College
, and the American Cultural Center (Tel Aviv
, Israel).
His manuscripts are housed as "The Alan Lelchuk Manuscript Collection" in the Howard Gotlieb Research Center in the Mugar Memorial Library
at Boston University
. In 1994 he co-founded Steerforth Press, and is a member of the independent publisher's editorial board.
He lives in the countryside of New Hampshire
.
Professor
A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...
, and editor
Editor
The term editor may refer to:As a person who does editing:* Editor in chief, having final responsibility for a publication's operations and policies* Copy editing, making formatting changes and other improvements to text...
from Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
. He did his undergraduate work at Brooklyn College
Brooklyn College
Brooklyn College is a senior college of the City University of New York, located in Brooklyn, New York, United States.Established in 1930 by the New York City Board of Higher Education, the College had its beginnings as the Downtown Brooklyn branches of Hunter College and the City College of New...
and received his Ph.D. from Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
in 1965. His novels are American Mischief, Miriam at Thirty-Four, Shrinking: The Beginning of My Own Ending, Miriam in Her Forties, Brooklyn Boy, Playing the Game, and Ziff: A Life? He co-edited 8 Great Hebrew Short Novels and has written, for young adults, On Home Ground. His work has been translated into more than half a dozen foreign language
Foreign language
A foreign language is a language indigenous to another country. It is also a language not spoken in the native country of the person referred to, i.e. an English speaker living in Japan can say that Japanese is a foreign language to him or her...
s, including Danish, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish.
His short fiction has appeared in such publications as Transatlantic Review
Transatlantic Review
Transatlantic Review was a literary journal founded and edited by Joseph F. McCrindle in 1959, and published at first in Rome, then London and New York...
, The Atlantic, Modern Occasions, The Boston Globe Magazine, and Partisan Review
Partisan Review
Partisan Review was an American political and literary quarterly published from 1934 to 2003, though it suspended publication between October 1936 and December 1937.-Overview:...
. Significant critical studies on Lelchuk have been Philip Roth
Philip Roth
Philip Milton Roth is an American novelist. He gained fame with the 1959 novella Goodbye, Columbus, an irreverent and humorous portrait of Jewish-American life that earned him a National Book Award...
in Esquire
Esquire (magazine)
Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...
, Wilfrid Sheed
Wilfrid Sheed
Wilfrid John Joseph Sheed was an English-born American novelist and essayist.Sheed was born in London to Francis "Frank" Sheed and Mary "Maisie" Ward, prominent Roman Catholic publishers in the United Kingdom and the United States during the mid-20th century...
in Book-of-the-Month Club News
Book of the Month Club
The Book of the Month Club is a United States mail-order book sales club that offers a new book each month to customers.The Book of the Month Club is part of a larger company that runs many book clubs in the United States and Canada. It was formerly the flagship club of Book-of-the-Month Club, Inc...
, Bejmain DeMott in The Atlantic, Mordechai Richler in the Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
, Robert Towers in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, and Steven Birkets in The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
.
He began teaching at Brandeis University
Brandeis University
Brandeis University is an American private research university with a liberal arts focus. It is located in the southwestern corner of Waltham, Massachusetts, nine miles west of Boston. The University has an enrollment of approximately 3,200 undergraduate and 2,100 graduate students. In 2011, it...
in 1966, was Visiting Writer for two years at Amherst College
Amherst College
Amherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,744 students in the fall of 2009...
, from 1982–1984, and has been a member of the Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...
faculty since 1985.
Some awards, honors, and citations include: a Yaddo
Yaddo
Yaddo is an artists' community located on a 400 acre estate in Saratoga Springs, New York. Its mission is "to nurture the creative process by providing an opportunity for artists to work without interruption in a supportive environment."...
Foundation Grant in 1968, 1969, 1971, and 1973, a MacDowell Colony
MacDowell Colony
The MacDowell Colony is an art colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, U.S.A., founded in 1907 by Marian MacDowell, pianist and wife of composer Edward MacDowell. She established the institution and its endowment chiefly with donated funds...
Fellowship in 1969 and 1974, a Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
in Fiction in 1976-1977, and Fulbright Writer-in-Residence at the University of Haifa
University of Haifa
The University of Haifa is a university in Haifa, Israel.The University of Haifa was founded in 1963 by Haifa mayor Abba Hushi, to operate under the academic auspices of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem....
, Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
in 1986-1987. In 1999-2000 he was the recipient of the Otto Salgo Chair in American Literature and Writing at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) in Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
, Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
and in 2003-2004 he received a Fulbright Scholar's Grant and taught at the International University of Moscow. Since 2005, he is a Fulbright Senior Specialist Professor, giving seminars in fiction writing and American Literature at Moscow State University
Moscow State University
Lomonosov Moscow State University , previously known as Lomonosov University or MSU , is the largest university in Russia. Founded in 1755, it also claims to be one of the oldest university in Russia and to have the tallest educational building in the world. Its current rector is Viktor Sadovnichiy...
, Universita di Napoli (Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
), and Die Freie Universität, Berlin.
He has also served as a visiting professor at the University of Rome, New York City College, and been in residence at Mishkenot Sha'ananim in Jerusalem. He has given readings and lectures at numerous institutions such as Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
, Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...
, Brandeis University
Brandeis University
Brandeis University is an American private research university with a liberal arts focus. It is located in the southwestern corner of Waltham, Massachusetts, nine miles west of Boston. The University has an enrollment of approximately 3,200 undergraduate and 2,100 graduate students. In 2011, it...
, the Boston Public Library
Boston Public Library
The Boston Public Library is a municipal public library system in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It was the first publicly supported municipal library in the United States, the first large library open to the public in the United States, and the first public library to allow people to...
, Boston University
Boston University
Boston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston's largest employers...
, Amherst College
Amherst College
Amherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,744 students in the fall of 2009...
, and the American Cultural Center (Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...
, Israel).
His manuscripts are housed as "The Alan Lelchuk Manuscript Collection" in the Howard Gotlieb Research Center in the Mugar Memorial Library
Mugar Memorial Library
The Mugar Memorial Library is the primary library for study, teaching, and research in the humanities and social sciences for Boston University and Boston University Academy. It was opened in 1966. Stephen P. Mugar, an Armenian immigrant who was successful in the grocery business, provided the...
at Boston University
Boston University
Boston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston's largest employers...
. In 1994 he co-founded Steerforth Press, and is a member of the independent publisher's editorial board.
He lives in the countryside of New Hampshire
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...
.
External links
- http://www.dartmouth.edu/~jewish/faculty/lelchuk.html (Dartmouth College Jewish Studies Department)
- http://www.dartmouth.edu/~news/releases/2003/09/19k.html
- http://biography.jrank.org/pages/4529/Lelchuk-Alan.html
- http://www.tikkun.org/article.php/Gordon-TheNewJewishCanon/print
- http://www.americanjewishfiction.com/author.php?id=134
- http://www.bu.edu/dbin/archives/index.php?pid=403&study_guides=14
- http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~immer/books1970s