| Martha Moody | |
| Birth Date: | 1955 8, mf=yes |
| Birth Place: | Ohio, U.S. |
| Occupation: | Novelist, physician |
| Alma Mater: | Oberlin College |
| Notableworks: | Best Friends, The Office of Desire |
Martha Moody (born August 8, 1955) is an American author. Her first novel, Best Friends, was published by Riverhead Books in 2001 and became a Washington Post national bestseller.[1] Her second novel, The Office of Desire, was published in 2007 and was named one of Kirkus Reviews "Best Books of the Year."[2] Sometimes Mine, Moody's third novel, was published in 2009.
Moody was born and raised in Ohio. She graduated from Oberlin College with a degree in English. During her junior year of college, Moody took a trip with her Spanish professor to South America to interview women poets, and after observing the poor health conditions there, decided to pursue a career in healthcare. She received her MD from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. Moody worked as a private practice internist for fifteen years, but quit after Best Friends’ publication. Currently, she volunteers at a clinic for the working poor in Dayton.[3]
Since 2007, Moody has led a volunteer group every summer to teach English in the Arab-Israeli village of Deir al-Assad, in the northern Galilee region of Israel.[4]
In March, 2011, in acknowledgement of her philanthropy, Moody was honored as a 2011 YWCA Woman of Influence.[5]
Martha Moody’s short story "Like the Arrival of Angels" was a finalist for The Best American Short Stories of 1985.[6]
Her debut novel, Best Friends, which tracks the long-term relationship between two friends who meet in college, was published in 2001. It became a national bestseller, and was selected in 2002 as a Target Book Club Pick.[7]
Moody’s second novel, The Office of Desire, appeared in 2007. Publishers Weekly described the book as a “sharply observed tale of office relationships gone very wrong at a small Ohio medical practice.”[8] Kirkus Reviews—in a starred review—called Moody “a genuinely original voice,” and the book “a bracingly dark comedy… a provocative, intensely moving novel of ideas and opposing philosophies presented by deeply flawed, deeply human characters,” and later named it one of the Best Books of ’07.[9]
Moody’s most recent novel, Sometimes Mine, was published in 2009, and follows a workaholic cardiologist’s decade-long, one night a week affair with a well-known basketball coach.
In a June, 2010 interview with author interview website Words to Mouth, Moody said that she was “working on a manuscript that deals with two families joined by marriage… I want to explore how families connected by marriage interact and influence each other."[10]
On April 15, 2011, Gawker’s science and technology blog io9 reported that Moody had just sold a new novel, Sharp and Dangerous Virtues, to Ohio University Press. Io9 reports that the book is a “dystopian-sounding novel” about Dayton, Ohio in the 2040s, wracked by “food shortages, foreign invaders and ordinary people having to fend for themselves.”[11]
Moody has also edited the English translations of numerous volumes of Arabic short stories and poetry by Palestinian writers—all edited and translated by Jamal Assadi—including the collections: A Rose to Hafeeza’s Eyes (Peter Lang, 2008), Three Voices from the Galilee (Peter Lang, 2009), Mustafa Murrar: The Internal Pages and Other Stories (Peter Lang, 2010), and Loud Sounds from the Holy Land (Peter Lang, 2011).[12]