So it was that at 2 AM, after multiple rounds of cleaning and yakking, I found myself seated in the kitchen on a kibble-filled bucket, a can of beer in one hand and Middlesex in the other. He told me there was an all night Denny’s down the street should I need a toilet during the night. “I want you to fix my toilet, so there won’t be shit on my floor.”Īfter 20 minutes of this verbal badminton, I realized the man wasn’t going to get out of bed without a signed act of congress. “There’s shit on my floor.” Why mince words? From a spot in the center of the living room I surveyed the apartment and discovered the source: the commode and the area around it were covered in yuck. Not a dead stench, or a spoiled food stench. Convinced that even the cars speeding past my window couldn’t keep me from this night’s rest, I opened the door to a stench of exceptional vileness. I got off the bus from Bumbershoot around 1 AM, exhausted. The proceeds of the collection go to the writing center 826 Chicago, established to encourage young people's writing. Eugenides has also published short stories.Įugenides is the editor of the collection of short stories titled My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead. It explores the experience of the intersexed in the USA. Part of it was set in Berlin, Germany, where Eugenides lived from 1999 to 2004, but it was chiefly concerned with the Greek-American immigrant experience in the United States, against the rise and fall of Detroit. His 2002 novel, Middlesex, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the Ambassador Book Award. In the fall of 2007, Eugenides joined the faculty of Princeton University's Program in Creative Writing. Jeffrey Eugenides lives in Princeton, New Jersey, with his wife, the photographer and sculptor Karen Yamauchi, and their daughter. He has said that he has been haunted by the decline of Detroit. The novel was reissued in 2009.Įugenides is reluctant to appear in public or disclose details about his private life, except through Michigan-area book signings in which he details the influence of Detroit and his high-school experiences on his writings. His 1993 novel, The Virgin Suicides, gained mainstream interest with the 1999 film adaptation directed by Sofia Coppola. In 1986 he received the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Nicholl Fellowship for his story 'Here Comes Winston, Full of the Holy Spirit'.

in Creative Writing from Stanford University. He took his undergraduate degree at Brown University, graduating in 1983.

He attended Grosse Pointe's private University Liggett School. Jeffrey Kent Eugenides is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and short story writer of Greek and Irish extraction.Įugenides was born in Detroit, Michigan, of Greek and Irish descent.

Eugenides jeffrey middlesex