Marge Piercy

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Other literary forms

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Marge Piercy (PEER-kee) published many novels, which span a wide range of genres from historical and political to science fiction and feminist utopian themes. Her fiction has appeared in an array of periodicals, including The Transatlantic Review, Works in Progress, and the New England Review. Various translations of her work appear in more than a dozen foreign-language editions. In addition, her poetry was featured on several recordings during the 1970’s.

Piercy has experimented with drama as well: The Last White Class: A Play About Neighborhood Terror, written with Ira Wood, was produced in 1978. Her nonfiction includes a calendar publication, The Earth Shines Secretly: A Book of Days (1990). She has written essays, has edited an anthology, and has had her own work appear in more than 150 anthologies. Her manuscript collection and archives are housed in the University of Michigan Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library.

Achievements

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Marge Piercy’s attainments are as numerous as her publications. She was the first person in her family to attend college and earned a scholarship to the University of Michigan. As an undergraduate, she won Hopwood Awards for original student writing, the first for poetry and fiction in 1956 and the second for poetry the following year. She later received a fellowship to Northwestern University, where she earned a master’s degree. Her poetry was occasionally printed during the 1960’s, but she wrote six novels before finding a publisher who would accept her work; Going Down Fast (1969) was her first success. She was a founding member of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the North America Congress on Latin America(NACLA). Piercy has earned numerous literary awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts award in 1978, the Sheaffer Eaton-PEN New England Award for Literary Excellence in 1989, the Arthur C. Clarke Award for best science fiction novel in the United Kingdom in 1992 and 1993, and the Shalom Center’s Brit ha-Dorot Award in 1992. She received the American Library Association’s Notable Book Award for What Are Big Girls Made Of? in 1997, the Paterson Poetry Prize in 2000 for The Art of Blessing the Day, and the Paterson Award for Literary Achievement in 2004 for Colors Passing Through Us. In 2006, Piercy was inducted in the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame and received the Lifetime Award in Women’s Studies. She has received four honorary doctorates.

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