Alice McDermott (born June 27, 1953) is an American writer and university professor. She is the author of nine novels and a collection of essays. For her 1998 novel Charming Billy she won an American Book Award and the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction and was a finalist for the International Dublin Literary Award and the Orange Prize. That Night, At Weddings and Wakes, and After This were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Her most recent novel, Absolution was awarded the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award.
From 2002 to 2019, McDermott was the Johns Hopkins University's Richard A. Macksey Professor of the Humanities.
