Lives of Consequence
Melissa S. Bank '82
Author
Embracing the idea that her own experience had merit as the subject of her stories, Bank wrote her first book, the 16-week New York Times-bestseller The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing, which has been translated into 30 languages since its release in 1999.
Publisher's Weekly said of her first book, "Reading her debut collection of seven tightly interlinked stories featuring (with one exception) heroine Jane Rosenal, one marvels at Bank's assured control of her material, her witty, distinctive voice and her ability to find comedy, pathos and drama in ordinary lives without resorting to the twin crutches of dysfunctional families and sexual abuse that seem to prop up much current fiction."
Attesting to its popularity, The Girl's Guide has already been adapted into one film with another in the works. The first, the 2007 "Suburban Girl," was based on two of Bank's chapters and starred Sarah Michelle Gellar and Alec Baldwin. The second, which is still in development, will have the book's name and is a collaborative effort between Zoetrope Studios and Francis Ford Coppola.
Published in 2005, her second novel, The Wonder Spot, was well-received by critics. "Pound for pound, line for line, story for story, The Wonder Spot is a better-honed and steadier volume," wrote The New York Times.
Outside of her writing, she has worked as an editorial assistant for Putnam Publishing Group as well as copywriter at McCann Erickson, an advertising agency in New York City.
Her work has appeared in a wide variety of publications, including The Chicago Tribune, Cosmopolitan, Epoch, Glamour, The Guardian, O: The Oprah Magazine, Ploughshares, Seventeen and The Washington Post, and has been broadcast on NPR, PRI and the BBC. She is the 1993 recipient of the Nelson Algren Award for the Short Story.
After graduating from William Smith with a B.A. in American studies, she went on to receive her MFA from Cornell in 1985. During the spring semester of 2009, Bank was a Visiting Writer in the Cornell MFA program. Bank divides her time between New York City and Sag Harbor, N.Y.