Background

Dennis McFarland was born in 1950 in the United States.

Education

Dennis McFarland studied at Brooklyn College where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1975. Then he attended Goddard College and Stanford University.

Career

Dennis McFarland is mostly known as an author of novels. His books include The Music Room, School for the Blind, A Face at the Window, Singing Boy, Prince Edward, Letter from Point Clear, and Nostalgia. Before becoming a writer, McFarland was a teacher of creative writing at Stanford University from 1981 to 1986. He also worked as a teacher at Goddard College and Emerson College.

The central figure of his first 1990 The Music Room is Martin Lambert, a twenty-nine-year-old who is introduced to the reader while he recalls his broken marriage. Memories of his separation from his wife turn to recollections of his own childhood. Much of The Music Room, which is framed as a mystery, concerns Martin’s reflections of his home life in childhood. Although structured as a mystery, The Music Room does not end in neat resolutions. Upon publication, the book won widespread praise. The Music Room has been optioned for a movie.

In Dennis McFarland's earlier novels, including his well-received debut, The Music Room and the acclaimed Prince Edward (2004), he displayed a remarkable finesse for creating scenes of family dynamics that ring uncannily true. In School for the Blind, published in 1994, McFarland once again deals with a haunted past.

In A Face at the Window, a novel that is by turns comic, terrifying, and tragic, Dennis McFarland delivers a fascinating story of a haunted man's spiritual awakening. Like A Face at the Window, the next novel Singing Boy (2001) traces the themes of alcoholism and death. In Letter from Point Clear (2007) Dennis McFarland conjures the love, need, discomfort, resentment, and warmth shared among grown siblings. His most recent novel Nostalgia (2013) reminds us that the injuries of war are manifold, and the healing goodness in the human soul runs deep and strong. McFarland is also a contributor to periodicals, including Mademoiselle, Mid-American Review, The New Yorker, Sequoia, The American Scholar, Prize Stories: The O’Henry Awards, Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere.

Achievements

• Dennis McFarland is a prolific and recognized author who received positive reviews for his books. He is the recipient of the 2014 Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction. McFarland's The Music Room won a fair measure of popular success in addition to the critical acclaim. He received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Wallace E. Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University in 1981.

Works

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  • Nostalgia

    (In the winter of 1864, Summerfield Hayes, a pitcher for t...)

    2013
  • A Face at the Window

    (When their daughter leaves for college, newly minted empt...)

    1997
  • School for the Blind

    (As a successful news photographer, Francis Brimm has live...)

    1994
  • Prince Edward

    (Prince Edward is the profound story of Benjamin Rome, a t...)

    2004
  • Singing Boy

    (On the way home from dinner, Malcolm Vaughn is shot and k...)

    2001
  • The Music Room

    (Musician Marty Lambert’s life is already falling apart wh...)

    1990
  • Letter from Point Clear

    (The Owen children long ago left their gracious family hom...)

    2007

Connections

Dennis McFarland is married to Michelle Blake. They have two children, Kate and Sam.

Wife:

Michelle Blake