Alice Adams was born in Virginia and graduated from Radcliffe College. Her short stories have appeared in twenty-two O. Henry Award collections and several volumes of Best American Short Stories, andshe is also the author of ten highly praised novels. She has been the recipient of an Academy and Institute Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. Ms. Adams's other novels include Superior Women; Almost Perfect, a New York Times Notable Book; and Medicine Men. She lived in San Francisco until her death in 1999.
