Maureen Corrigan

Maureen Corrigan (born July 30, 1955) is an American author, scholar, and literary critic. She is the book critic on the NPR radio program Fresh Air and writes for the "Book World" section of The Washington Post. In 2014, she wrote So We Read On, a book on the origins and power of The Great Gatsby. In 2005, she published a literary memoir Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books. Corrigan was awarded the 2018 Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing by the National Book Critics Circle for her reviews on Fresh Air on NPR and in The Washington Post, She credits her father, another "lone reader," for inspiring her love of reading. Corrigan holds a B.A. degree from Fordham University, as well as an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.

Career Corrigan is The Nicky and Jamie Grant Distinguished Professor of the Practice in Literary Criticism at Georgetown University where she began teaching in 1989. She is a reviewer and columnist for the "Book World" section of The Washington Post since 1990,

So We Read On Corrigan investigates what makes F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby so captivating and influential, through "archives, high school classrooms, and even out onto the Long Island Sound, to explore the novel's hidden depths, a journey whose revelations include Gatsby's surprising debt to hard-boiled crime fiction, its rocky path to recognition as a "classic," and its profound commentaries on the national themes of race, class, and gender."

Corrigan pinpoints restlessness as a quintessential American quality, one she perceives in Fitzgerald's knowing depiction of New York City, the great mecca for dreamers with its promise of freedom, new identities, success, and "unsentimental sex." She explains why she considers The Great Gatsby to be "America's greatest novel about class" as well as the vanquishing of God and the worship of idols in the aftermath of World War I, the fantasy that one can truly reinvent one's self, the grandeur of longing, and the spell of illusion.

Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading Corrigan has written a literary memoir, Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books, first published in 2005, which reviews the books that most influenced her personally, belonging in the main to three non-canonical genres – female extreme-adventure tales (narratives recounting "private tests of endurance" in women's lives), hard-boiled detective novels, and Catholic-martyr narratives. The main focus of the book, however, is on the first extreme adventure tales, and Corrigan observes that narratives themed around female suffering are today breaking with a millennia-old tradition.

Awards Corrigan was awarded the 2018 Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing by the National Book Critics Circle for her reviews on Fresh Air on NPR and in The Washington Post, and the 1999 Edgar Award for Criticism by the Mystery Writers of America for her book Mystery & Suspense Writers, co-authored with Robin W. Cook.

Personal life Corrigan lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and daughter.