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National Book Foundation > Author > Melissa Fay Greene
Melissa Fay Greene is the author of five books of nonfiction: Praying for Sheetrock (1991), The Temple Bombing (1996), Last Man Out (2003), There Is No Me Without You: One Woman’s Odyssey to Rescue her Country’s Children (2006), and No Biking in the House Without A Helmet (2011). Her honors include 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, theSalon Book Award, Elle Magazine’s Readers’ Prize, the Georgia Author Award, (and another Georgia Author Award bestowed by a different organization evidently unaware that there was already a Georgia Author Award). Praying For Sheetrock was named one of the top 100 works of American journalism of the 20th century and appears on Entertainment Weekly‘s list of “The New Classics–The … Continue reading “Melissa Fay Greene” More about this author >
Melissa Fay Greene is the author of five books of nonfiction: Praying for Sheetrock (1991), The Temple Bombing (1996), Last Man Out (2003), There Is No Me Without You: One Woman’s Odyssey to Rescue her Country’s Children (2006), and No Biking in the House Without A Helmet (2011).
Her honors include 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, theSalon Book Award, Elle Magazine’s Readers’ Prize, the Georgia Author Award, (and another Georgia Author Award bestowed by a different organization evidently unaware that there was already a Georgia Author Award). Praying For Sheetrock was named one of the top 100 works of American journalism of the 20th century and appears on Entertainment Weekly‘s list of “The New Classics–The 100 Best Books of the Last 25 Years.”
Melissa has contributed to The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Good Housekeeping, Readers Digest, Life, MS, Newsweek, The Wilson Quarterly, Parade, Redbook, Parenting, HuffingtonPost, Salon, TheDailyBeast, and CNN.com and her books have been translated into 15 languages. She is a 2010 recipient of a doctorate of letters from Emory University and a 2011 inductee into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame, inspiring her children to ask whether this made her rookie card more valuable.
A recent New York Times Magazine article, “Wonder Dog,” went viral, becoming the number one most searched and most emailed story for the month of February 2012. It has been acquired by Ecco Press, an imprint of HarperCollins, and will become a book.
A native of Macon, Georgia, childhood resident of Dayton, Ohio, and 1975 graduate of Oberlin College, Melissa and her husband, defense attorney Don Samuel, have lived in Georgia since 1975. Today they live in Atlanta and are the parents of six sons and three daughters.