Francine Prose (born April 1, 1947, Brooklyn, New York) is an American writer. Since March 2007 she has been the president of PEN American Center. She graduated from Radcliffe College in 1968 and received a Guggenheim fellowship in 1991.
She sat on the board of judges for the PEN/Newman's Own Award. Her novel, Blue Angel, a satire about sexual harassment on college campuses, was a finalist for the National Book Award.
She is a Visiting Professor of Literature at Bard College. One of her novels, Household Saints, was adapted for a movie by Nancy Savoca. Another, The Glorious Ones, has been adapted into a musical with the same title by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty. It ran at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre at Lincoln Center in New York City in the fall of 2007.
Prose received the PEN Translation Prize in 1988.
Famous quotes containing the words francine and/or prose:
“Francine Evans: That seat’s taken.
Jimmy Doyle: I know it’s taken. But I’m gonna sit here and I’m gonna figure out another angle.”
—Earl MacRauch, U.S. screenwriter, Mardik Martin, and Martin Scorsese. Francine Evans (Liza Minnelli)
“The crown of literature is poetry. It is its end and aim. It is the sublimest activity of the human mind. It is the achievement of beauty and delicacy. The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes.”
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1966)