Andover Authors
Andrew Coburn
Mary McGarry Morris
Jay Leno
Susan Kelly
Jeanne Schinto
Paul Monette
Linda Sones Feinberg
Deborah Warren
Other authors with Andover
connections
GENRE(S): Mystery/Crime/Suspense
Mr. Coburn was born in Exeter, NH, and
has been a longtime resident of Andover.
He attended Suffolk University in Boston
and, over the years as a writer and
editor, he has worked for newspapers in
Lawrence and for the Boston Globe. He is
married to the former Bernadine Casey, a
college public relations director, and
is the father of Cathleen, Krista, Lisa
and Heather.
In 1990, Mr. Coburn received an Edgar
Allan Poe Award nomination for
Goldilocks. He is also the recipient of
a Doctor of Letters degree from
Merrimack College, N. Andover, MA, and a
Eugene Saxton fellowship. Many of this
author's novels are set in his home
state of Massachusetts.
Maureen Taylor of the Boston Globe
notes, "Coburn, like Hitchcock, exploits
the potential for terror in the macabre
played out against the mundane ... his
people ring true."
MARY (JOAN) McGARRY
MORRIS
GENRE: Fiction
Mary McGarry Morris was born in Meriden,
CT, the daughter of John and Margaret
McGarry. In 1962, she married Michael
Morris, an attorney, and settled in
Andover while raising a family. She is
the mother of Mary Margaret, Sarah,
Melissa, Michael, and Amy. Matriculating
at both the University of Vermont and
the University of Massachusetts, she has
worked in the Massachusetts Department
of Welfare in Lawrence, MA, and has
spent some time as a financial
assistance social worker.
Her novel,
Vanished, amid much acclaim,
garnered for her both a National Book
Award nomination (1988) and a PEN/
Faulkner Award nomination (1999).
Songs in
Ordinary Time was an Oprah Book
Club selection.
New York Times Book Review contributor
Alice McDermott comments, "Morris does
not devise plots, but traps:
steel-toothed, inescapable traps of
circumstances and personality against
which her characters struggle and fail."
GENRE(S): Humor/Satire,
Autobiography/Memoir
The man the world knows as "Jay Leno" was born James Douglas Muir Leno in New
Rochelle, New York. Son of Angelo and Cathryn Leno, he is married to Mavis
Nicholson. Jay grew up in Andover and
graduated from Emerson College. He has
an avid interest in antique motorcycles
and automobiles.
A versatile performer, Jay has been a
Rolls Royce auto mechanic and
deliveryman, as well as a stand-up
comedian who became a household word for
late night television enthusiasts as the
affable host of The Tonight Show.
His autobiography,
Leading with
My Chin, details his rise to fame
and the vicissitudes that befall a
growing boy with a great sense of humor
and perfect timing. Known as "a nice
guy", according to New York Times Book
Review contributor, Bill Carter, "Mr.
Leno is about performing."
Among his awards is a Writers Guild of
America nomination (1987); and an Emmy
Award for Best Musical or Variety Series
(1995) for The Tonight Show.
Jay loves his home town, and has been
very generous to Andover in terms of his
time and his money! He loves us and we
love him.
GENRE(S): Mystery/Crime/Investigative
non-fiction
Susan Kelly was born in New York City,
moving to New England in her early years
and matriculated at Massachusetts
colleges where she earned both a B.A.
and M.A. in English. She also received a
Ph.D in medieval literature from the
University of Edinburgh.
Her first novel,
The Gemini Man,
garnered an Anthony Award nomination for
Best First Novel of 1985 and scored in
the top ten books in the National
Mystery Readers' Poll that year.
Elements of suspense, humor and romance
are skillfully woven through all her
novels.
During her career as a writer she has
been a consultant to the Massachusetts
Criminal Justice Training Council and a
teacher of crime-report writing at the
Cambridge, Mass. Police Academy.
Her research into the Boston Strangler
killings evolved into her most recent
book, The
Boston Stranglers: the public conviction
of Albert DeSalvo and the true story of
eleven shocking murders, a
non-fiction investigative offering in
which she discusses Albert DeSalvo's
innocence. She was recently interviewed
and featured in a front cover story in
Boston Magazine.
GENRE(S):
Nonfiction, Fiction, Anthologies
Jeanne Schinto was born in Greenwich,
CT, to Henry and Josephine Schinto.
Married to Robert J. Frishman (a
horologist), she was educated at George
Washington University (B.A. Journalism
and American Studies), and Johns Hopkins
University (M.A. Discipline in Fiction
Writing) and makes her home in Andover.
Among her published works are
Shadow Bands
(alluded to as a "wonderful collection
of stories" by Los Angeles Times Book
Review contributor, Judith Freeman);
The Literary
Dog: Great Contemporary Dog Stories;
and a novel,
Children of Men. But it is in
Huddle Fever:
Living in the Immigrant City and
writing from personal experience, that
Schinto gains much local acclaim as she
details urban decline in nearby
Lawrence, Massachusetts. A Publisher's
Weekly commentator called Schinto's book
"an intriguing blend of reportage,
history and reflection."
GENRE(S):
Novels, Poetry, Nonfiction,
Autobiography/Memoirs
Paul Monette was born October 16,
1945, in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He
spent his childhood and early formative
years in Andover, graduating from
Philips Andover Academy, and Yale
University. A distinguished writer of
poetry, novels, and autobiographical
volumes, much of his opus deals with the
issues of homosexuality and AIDS. His
autobiographical book,
Becoming a
Man: Half a Life Story won the
National Book Award for non-fiction in
1992. Borrowed
Time : an AIDS Memoir is an
account of the death of Monette's lover
from AIDS. Monette himself died of AIDS
on February 10, 1995.
He first received critical attention
in 1975 with the publication of his
poetry collection,
The Carpenter
at the Asylum.
Placing Monette's legacy within the
tradition of gay male literature, Daniel
Mendelsohn, writing in The Nation,
concluded: "Monette's may not be the
most melodious in the choir of gay
voices, but it's unmistakably his, still
too gay, too personal; and that
distinctiveness, which has evolved over
a long and ultimately brave career,
makes it all the more difficult to
imagine the literary stage without this
particular player".
LINDA SONES FINEBERG
GENRE:
Psychology
I'm
Grieving as Fast as I Can: how young
widows and widowers can cope and heal
(hundreds of copies of this title were
distributed to spouses of World Trade
Center victims); and
Teasing:
innocent fun or sadistic malice?
Linda was born in Boston, and raised
in Newton. she has a degree in
Government from Boston University, and a
MSW from Boston College. She ran the
foster home program for the City of
Boston from 1975-1979. Linda was the
statewide founder of Young Widows and
Widowers of Massachusetts, which still
meets weekly in Andover.
Linda is married to Dr. Alec
Feinberg. She is the mother of Marissa
(22) and Jennifer (13). (source: the
author)
DEBORAH WARREN
(MCNAUGHTON)
GENRE:
Poetry
Deborah Warren was born in Boston,
Massachusetts and educated at Harvard
University, from where she graduated
with a BA in English. She spent fifteen
years teaching Latin and English at Pike
School, where she taught as Mrs.
McNaughton. She and her husband, who
have nine children, now raise heifers on
a farm in Vermont, while living across
the border in Massachusetts. Her work
has been published in a wide variety of
journals and has also won a number of
prestigious awards. In 2002, she won the
Robert Frost Award for her poem
Sheepdog
Trials at Bleinau Ffestiniog. Her
books include
Size of Happiness and
Zero Meridian.
OTHER AUTHORS WITH
ANDOVER CONNECTIONS
Jennifer
Block
What to Do
When You're Dating a Jew: everything you
need to know from matzo balls to
marriage (2000) coauthored with
Vikki Weiss.
Jennifer grew up in Andover, graduated
from Andover High in 1987, and has a
Journalism degree from Boston
University. She now lives with her
husband in San Francisco. (source: the
author)
Wendy
Darling
Breeding
discontent. Wendy grew up
in Andover and now lives in Georgia.
She worked at MHL as a page while in
high school.
Gary W.
Ferris
Presidential places : a guide to the
historic sites of U.S. presidents
(1999). Gary has recently moved from
Pennsylvania to Andover.
Sources
include: Contemporary Authors, The Gale
Group
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