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Melissa Pritchard Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Melissa Pritchard
Morgan Duke

Melissa Pritchard

Melissa Pritchard Biography

Melissa Pritchard is the author of twelve books, including the novels Flight of the Wild Swan and Palmerino, the short story collection The Odditorium, and the essay collection A Solemn Pleasure: To Imagine, Witness, and Write. Among other honors, she has received the Flannery O'Connor Award, Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, and Carl Sandburg Literary Award as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Carson McCullers Center. Emeritus Professor of English and Women's Studies at Arizona State University, she is the fiction editor for Image journal and lives in Columbus, Georgia.

Melissa Pritchard's website

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Interview

Melissa Pritchard on Flight of the Wild Swan

I have been interested in hospitals, medicine, and nursing for as long as I can remember. Being a candy striper volunteer at Stanford Hospital in high school is one of my happiest adolescent memories. I love the atmosphere of "angels among us," of people healing other people, observing the countless selfless acts of kindness that go on in hospitals. I once wanted to be a doctor but realized I didn't have the interest or aptitude in science I would need to be a pre-med student, so I gravitated, over time, toward the arts, specifically writing and acting. Later, I would recognize parallels between doctors and writers—both are diagnosticians, both study human behavior and the complex interactions of mind/emotion/body/spirit.

As I got older and traveled abroad, I would always visit medical museums if there were any nearby. The history of medicine in relationship to war has always interested me since some of the greatest medical discoveries have come from learning to treat war injuries, wounds often inflicted by the newest weapons of the time.

Not until my forties was I finally able to visit England. From the moment I arrived, it felt like returning to a place I had known long and well and still deeply loved. Not so much modern-...

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Books by this Author

Books by Melissa Pritchard at BookBrowse
Flight of the Wild Swan jacket
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Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Melissa Pritchard but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

  • Kaitlyn Greenidge

    Kaitlyn Greenidge

    Kaitlyn Greenidge's debut novel, We Love You, Charlie Freeman, was one of the New York Times Critics' Top 10 Books of 2016 and a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. She is a contributing writer for the New ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Flight of the Wild Swan

    Try:
    Libertie
    by Kaitlyn Greenidge

  • Kristin Hannah

    Kristin Hannah

    Kristin Hannah is an award-winning international number one bestselling author with over 25 million copies of her books sold worldwide. Her most recent titles, The Four Winds, The Nightingale and The Great Alone won numerous ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Flight of the Wild Swan

    Try:
    The Women
    by Kristin Hannah

We recommend 4 similar authors

View all 4 Read-Alikes

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Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Daughters of Shandong
    Daughters of Shandong
    by Eve J. Chung
    Daughters of Shandong is the debut novel of Eve J. Chung, a human rights lawyer living in New York. ...
  • Book Jacket: The Women
    The Women
    by Kristin Hannah
    Kristin Hannah's latest historical epic, The Women, is a story of how a war shaped a generation ...
  • Book Jacket: The Wide Wide Sea
    The Wide Wide Sea
    by Hampton Sides
    By 1775, 48-year-old Captain James Cook had completed two highly successful voyages of discovery and...
  • Book Jacket: My Friends
    My Friends
    by Hisham Matar
    The title of Hisham Matar's My Friends takes on affectionate but mournful tones as its story unfolds...

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Book Jacket
In Our Midst
by Nancy Jensen
In Our Midst follows a German immigrant family’s fight for freedom after their internment post–Pearl Harbor.
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