Thomas Mallon

Thomas Mallon is a writer of fiction and literary criticism. His eight novels include Henry and Clara, Bandbox, Fellow Travelers, and Watergate, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. His nonfiction books have been about plagiarism (Stolen Words), diaries (A Book of One’s Own), letters (Yours Ever) and the Kennedy assassination (Mrs. Paine’s Garage), and he has published two volumes of essays (Rockets and Rodeos and In Fact). His work appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Book Review and other publications. The recipient of Guggenheim and Rockefeller fellowships, as well as the National Book Critics Circle award for reviewing, he taught for many years at Vassar College. In 2012, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Prior to coming to GW, he was the literary editor of Gentlemen’s Quarterly and Deputy Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. During summers, he often teaches at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in Vermont. He is currently writing a novel set in Washington during the later years of the Reagan presidency.

Books

Fiction
Finale (Pantheon, 2015)
Watergate (Pantheon, 2012)
Fellow Travelers (Pantheon, 2007)
Bandbox (Pantheon, 2004)
Two Moons (Pantheon, 2000).
Dewey Defeats Truman (Pantheon, 1997; Picador paperback, 1998;
Henry and Clara (Houghton Mifflin; Ticknor & Fields, 1994)
Aurora 7 (Houghton Mifflin; Ticknor & Fields, 1991)
Arts and Sciences (Houghton Mifflin; Ticknor & Fields, 1988)

Nonfiction
Yours Ever: People and Their Letters (Pantheon, 2009)
Mrs. Paine’s Garage (Pantheon, 2002)
In Fact: Essays on Writers and Writing (Pantheon, 2001)
Rockets and Rodeos (Houghton Mifflin; Ticknor & Fields, 1993)
Stolen Words: Forays Into the Origins and Ravages of Plagiarism (Houghton Mifflin; Ticknor & Fields, 1989)
A Book of One's Own: People and Their Diaries (Houghton Mifflin; Ticknor & Fields, 1984)
Edmund Blunden (G. K. Hall, l983)

Recent articles and essays

"Magnified," a short piece of fiction in JFK: In His Time and Ours, a special commemorative issue (Fall 2013) of The Atlantic about the Kennedy presidency, pages 138-143.

"Less Said," The New Yorker, March 11, 2013, 66-71. (A "Critic-at-Large" piece on Calvin Coolidge.)

"Wag the Dog," The New Yorker, February 4, 2013, 68-74. (A "Critic-at-Large" piece on Richard Nixon in the 1950s.)

"The Heat Is On," The New York Times Book Review, October 28, 2012, pp 1, 16-17. (Review of Tom Wolfe's Back to Blood.)

Ph.D., Harvard University, 1978
M.A., Harvard University, 1974
B.A., Brown University, 1973