Governor Eliot Spitzer named Mary Gordon, BC ’71 and an English professor at Barnard, the official New York State Author on Monday.
Gordon, a bestselling writer and New York native, is the first woman to receive the honor since the late 1980s. Past winners of the award, called the Edith Wharton Citation of Merit for Fiction, include Kurt Vonnegut and Norman Mailer. The prize comes with a $10,000 honorarium, and calls on Gordon to “promote and encourage fiction within the State and ... give two public readings within the State each year.”
As an undergraduate, Gordon valued the support distinctive of the Barnard experience, colleagues said, and was able to find her voice as a woman and a writer. Eager to return to her roots in Morningside Heights, she joined the faculty as an adjunct professor in 1989, and was named the Millicent C. McIntosh Professor of English the following year.
“Her whole life has been centered in New York. It weaves outward into a much larger world of human experience,” Barnard English department chair Achsah Guibbory said of her friend and colleague. Because Gordon has lived in New York for her entire life, Guibbory said, “New York is her place. It really is. It’s the center from which she writes.”
The New York State Writers Institute, which formed an advisory panel of distinguished authors to recommend an honoree to Governor Spitzer, selected Gordon as the 2008-2010 term author award winner, and Jean Valentine as the state poet.
Gordon—a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Kafka Prize, and the New York Public Library Literary Lion Award, among other honors—has written four bestselling books, and is currently on a leave of absence from Barnard to promote her memoir, Circling My Mother.
Guibbory believes Circling My Mother puts Gordon on the map among New York’s pre-eminent writers, and was thrilled to see a woman receive statewide recognition.
Guibbory added that she does not think female writers are taken as seriously as men within literary circles. Still, she said, “Mary is the perfect person to win it, and it’s her time.”
For Gordon, achieving such recognition has been a long struggle. Though she was unavailable for comment yesterday because she is out of town publicizing her book, Gordon said in a 1998 interview, “It’s harder for young women, even now, to feel that they have the right to their own voice. And I feel like that’s my job.”
Nina Shield, BC ’07 and a former student of Gordon’s, said that based on her experience, Gordon succeeds in fulfilling that task.
“She always emphasized the fact that Barnard turns out the most successful writers ... and Mary has to be partly responsible for that,” Shield said.
Shield took Gordon’s creative writing class sophomore year, and Gordon became her academic adviser shortly thereafter. Shield found herself in Gordon’s office on a regular basis, and said their dialogue evolved from guidance about what classes Shield should take to chatting about anything at all—academically oriented or not.
“She was just the most incredible mentor towards me,” Shield said, adding that Gordon continues to look out for her, helping her scope out jobs post-graduation. When in Rome on vacation, she met up with Gordon, who took Shield, her friend, and her boyfriend out for dinner.
“I write to her with questions about my job, my future, and books, and she’s always very responsive,” said Shield, who is considering following in Gordon’s footsteps to pursue writing and perhaps a graduate degree in English.
“She takes her students’ work seriously, and so in turn, you begin to look at your own writing differently,” said Clare Needham, BC ’08, who has taken two of Gordon’s writing classes and is now working with her on an independent study for her senior writing thesis.
Meanwhile, Gordon—whom Guibbory described as tough, realistic, and adored by her students—continues to spread her bold Barnard roots into New York state and beyond.
betsy.morais@columbiaspectator.com