Melanie Thernstrom
Encyclopedia
Melanie Thernstrom is an author and contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine who frequently writes about murders and crime.
She is the daughter of Abigail Thernstrom
, a prominent political scientist, and Stephan Thernstrom
, the Winthrop Professor of American History at Harvard
.
Thernstrom attended Harvard University
, where she graduated with highest honors in English. Her senior thesis was entitled Mistakes of Metaphor, an account of the mysterious disappearance and murder of her best friend, Bibi Lee, three years earlier, for which Lee’s boyfriend was eventually convicted on the basis of a confession which he recanted. Thernstrom's poetry professor showed the thesis to literary agents, and she soon received an advance of $367,000. The Dead Girl, which was published by Pocket Books in 1990, was praised by literary critics such as Harold Bloom
, Harold Brodkey
and Helen Vendler
as reimagining the true crime genre with its use of literary theory and reflections on memory and metaphor. Harold Brodkey noted "I like this book better than In Cold Blood
. It is more honest, more credible, more frightening, and more instructive. The Dead Girl is groundbreaking, new and startling." In The New York Review of Books
, Helen Vendler described it as "a coming of age through tragedy... a portrait of the artist as a young woman... a notable model of the female Bildungsroman
."
Thernstrom's second book, Halfway Heaven: Diary of a Harvard Murder, was about Sinedu Tadesse
, a Harvard junior from Ethiopia
who murdered her Vietnam
ese roommate and then committed suicide while living at Dunster House
in 1995. In contrast to The Dead Girl, Halfway Heaven explores murder from the point of view of the murderer. Thernstrom had met Tadesse while teaching an autobiographical writing course at Harvard. After her death, Thernstrom reported on it for The New Yorker
, traveling to Ethiopia and obtaining access to Tadesse's diaries which described her struggles against growing mental illness and her failed attempts to get help from the University. Halfway Heaven was praised by Mikal Gilmore
as demonstrating "a great, shattering gift for writing about forgotten people: the dead, those who kill them, the secrets and histories that bind the killer and the killed." In the Times Literary Supplement, Elaine Showalter
praised it as a "gripping novelistic record... a haunting story of insiders and outsiders."
In 1999, Thernstrom wrote a lengthy Vanity Fair
article on murdered college student Matthew Shepard
. Her pieces in the New York Times Magazine have included ones on
the Lord's Resistance Army
in Northern Uganda
,
narrative medicine
,
physical pain
,
high-end matchmakers
,
divorce
,
fugitive
s,
and a personal essay on losing an art inheritance.
Her work has also appeared in New York
magazine, The Wall Street Journal
, Food & Wine
, Travel + Leisure
, Elle
, and other publications. Her food essays have appeared in Best American Food Writing 2001 and 2004.
Thernstrom received an MFA
in creative writing at Cornell
and taught creative writing at Cornell, Harvard, and in the MFA program at the University of California, Irvine
. She lives with her husband in New York City
and near Portland, Oregon
.
She is the daughter of Abigail Thernstrom
Abigail Thernstrom
Abigail Thernstrom, a conservative political scientist, is a former Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute in New York, a member of the Massachusetts Board of Education, and vice chair of the United States Commission on Civil Rights. She received her Ph.D...
, a prominent political scientist, and Stephan Thernstrom
Stephan Thernstrom
Stephan Thernstrom is the Winthrop Research Professor of History at Harvard University. and was the editor of the Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups ....
, the Winthrop Professor of American History at Harvard
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...
.
Thernstrom attended 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...
, where she graduated with highest honors in English. Her senior thesis was entitled Mistakes of Metaphor, an account of the mysterious disappearance and murder of her best friend, Bibi Lee, three years earlier, for which Lee’s boyfriend was eventually convicted on the basis of a confession which he recanted. Thernstrom's poetry professor showed the thesis to literary agents, and she soon received an advance of $367,000. The Dead Girl, which was published by Pocket Books in 1990, was praised by literary critics such as Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom is an American writer and literary critic, and is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. He is known for his defense of 19th-century Romantic poets, his unique and controversial theories of poetic influence, and his prodigious literary output, particularly for a literary...
, Harold Brodkey
Harold Brodkey
Harold Brodkey, born Aaron Roy Weintraub was an American writer, and novelist.-Life:Brodkey was raised in University City, Missouri outside St. Louis...
and Helen Vendler
Helen Vendler
Helen Hennessy Vendler is a leading American critic of poetry.-Life and career:Vendler has written books on Emily Dickinson, W. B. Yeats, Wallace Stevens, John Keats, and Seamus Heaney. She has been a professor of English at Harvard University since 1984; between 1981 and 1984 she taught...
as reimagining the true crime genre with its use of literary theory and reflections on memory and metaphor. Harold Brodkey noted "I like this book better than In Cold Blood
In Cold Blood (book)
In Cold Blood is a 1966 book by American author Truman Capote detailing the brutal 1959 murders of Herbert Clutter, a successful farmer from Holcomb, Kansas, his wife and two of their four children. Two older daughters no longer lived at the farm and were not there at the time of the murders...
. It is more honest, more credible, more frightening, and more instructive. The Dead Girl is groundbreaking, new and startling." In The New York Review of Books
The New York Review of Books
The New York Review of Books is a fortnightly magazine with articles on literature, culture and current affairs. Published in New York City, it takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity...
, Helen Vendler described it as "a coming of age through tragedy... a portrait of the artist as a young woman... a notable model of the female Bildungsroman
Bildungsroman
In literary criticism, bildungsroman or coming-of-age story is a literary genre which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood , and in which character change is thus extremely important...
."
Thernstrom's second book, Halfway Heaven: Diary of a Harvard Murder, was about Sinedu Tadesse
Sinedu Tadesse
Sinedu Tadesse was a junior in college at Harvard University when she murdered her roommate, Trang Phuong Ho, and then killed herself on May 28, 1995. The ensuing scandal played out in the courts and Boston newspapers, and may have resulted in a variety of changes to the administration of living...
, a Harvard junior from Ethiopia
Ethiopia
Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...
who murdered her Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
ese roommate and then committed suicide while living at Dunster House
Dunster House
Dunster House, built in 1930, is one of the first two Harvard University dormitories constructed under President Abbott Lawrence Lowell's House Plan, and one of the seven Houses given to Harvard by Edward Harkness. In the early days, room rents varied based on the floor and the size of the room...
in 1995. In contrast to The Dead Girl, Halfway Heaven explores murder from the point of view of the murderer. Thernstrom had met Tadesse while teaching an autobiographical writing course at Harvard. After her death, Thernstrom reported on it for The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, traveling to Ethiopia and obtaining access to Tadesse's diaries which described her struggles against growing mental illness and her failed attempts to get help from the University. Halfway Heaven was praised by Mikal Gilmore
Mikal Gilmore
Mikal Gilmore is an American writer. He was born "Michael Gilmore," but later changed the spelling of his name.-Life & career:Gilmore was born on February 9, 1951 in Portland, Oregon to Frank and Bessie Gilmore....
as demonstrating "a great, shattering gift for writing about forgotten people: the dead, those who kill them, the secrets and histories that bind the killer and the killed." In the Times Literary Supplement, Elaine Showalter
Elaine Showalter
Elaine Showalter is an American literary critic, feminist, and writer on cultural and social issues. She is one of the founders of feminist literary criticism in United States academia, developing the concept and practice of gynocritics.She is well known and respected in both academic and popular...
praised it as a "gripping novelistic record... a haunting story of insiders and outsiders."
In 1999, Thernstrom wrote a lengthy Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair (magazine)
Vanity Fair is a magazine of pop culture, fashion, and current affairs published by Condé Nast. The present Vanity Fair has been published since 1983 and there have been editions for four European countries as well as the U.S. edition. This revived the title which had ceased publication in 1935...
article on murdered college student Matthew Shepard
Matthew Shepard
Matthew Wayne Shepard was a student at the University of Wyoming who was tortured and murdered near Laramie, Wyoming, in October 1998...
. Her pieces in the New York Times Magazine have included ones on
the Lord's Resistance Army
Aboke abductions
The Aboke abductions were the abductions of 139 female secondary school students by rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army from St. Mary's College boarding school in Aboke, northern Apac District, Uganda on 10 October 1996. The deputy head mistress of the college, Sister Rachele Fassera of Italy,...
in Northern Uganda
Uganda
Uganda , officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. Uganda is also known as the "Pearl of Africa". It is bordered on the east by Kenya, on the north by South Sudan, on the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the southwest by Rwanda, and on the south by...
,
narrative medicine
Narrative medicine
Narrative Medicine connotes a medicine practiced with narrative competence and marked with an understanding of the highly complex narrative situations among doctors, patients, colleagues, and the public.-History:...
,
physical pain
Pain
Pain is an unpleasant sensation often caused by intense or damaging stimuli such as stubbing a toe, burning a finger, putting iodine on a cut, and bumping the "funny bone."...
,
high-end matchmakers
Matchmakers
Matchmakers are an elongated chocolate confectionery product made by Nestlé. Thin, twig-like and brittle, they were first launched in 1968 by Rowntree's and were just one third of the length they are now...
,
divorce
Divorce
Divorce is the final termination of a marital union, canceling the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage and dissolving the bonds of matrimony between the parties...
,
fugitive
Fugitive
A fugitive is a person who is fleeing from custody, whether it be from private slavery, a government arrest, government or non-government questioning, vigilante violence, or outraged private individuals...
s,
and a personal essay on losing an art inheritance.
Her work has also appeared in New York
New York (magazine)
New York is a weekly magazine principally concerned with the life, culture, politics, and style of New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to The New Yorker, it was brasher and less polite than that magazine, and established itself as a cradle of New...
magazine, The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
, Food & Wine
Food & Wine
Food & Wine is a monthly magazine published by American Express Publishing. It was founded in 1978 by Ariane and Michael Batterberry. It features recipes, cooking tips, travel information, restaurant reviews, chefs, wine pairings and seasonal/holiday content and has been credited by The New York...
, Travel + Leisure
Travel + Leisure
Travel + Leisure is a travel magazine based in New York City, New York. Published 12 times a year, it has 4.8 million readers, according to its corporate media kit. It is put out by American Express Publishing Corporation, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of American Express Company led by...
, Elle
Elle (magazine)
Elle is a worldwide magazine of French origin that focuses on women's fashion, beauty, health, and entertainment. Elle is also the world's largest fashion magazine. It was founded by Pierre Lazareff and his wife Hélène Gordon in 1945. The title, in French, means "she".-History:Elle was founded in...
, and other publications. Her food essays have appeared in Best American Food Writing 2001 and 2004.
Thernstrom received an MFA
Master of Fine Arts
A Master of Fine Arts is a graduate degree typically requiring 2–3 years of postgraduate study beyond the bachelor's degree , although the term of study will vary by country or by university. The MFA is usually awarded in visual arts, creative writing, filmmaking, dance, or theatre/performing arts...
in creative writing at Cornell
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
and taught creative writing at Cornell, Harvard, and in the MFA program at the University of California, Irvine
University of California, Irvine
The University of California, Irvine , founded in 1965, is one of the ten campuses of the University of California, located in Irvine, California, USA...
. She lives with her husband in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
and near Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
.
External links
- Melanie Thernstrom's Halfway Heaven Exclusive interview, print excerpt and author reading; plus an essay: "English Only".