Corinne Demas is the award winning author of five novels, two collections of short stories, a collection of poetry, a memoir, two plays, and numerous books for children. She has published more than fifty short stories in a variety of magazines and literary journals. Her publications before 2000 are under the name Corinne Demas Bliss.
Personal
Corinne Demas grew up in New York City, in Stuyvesant Town, the subject of her memoir, Eleven Stories High, Growing Up in Stuyvesant Town, 1948-1968. She attended Hunter College High School, graduated from Tufts University, and completed a Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.
She lived in Pittsburgh for a decade, teaching at the University of Pittsburgh and at Chatham College. In 1978 she moved to New England and began teaching at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, where she is now professor emerita of English. A fiction editor of The Massachusetts Review, she is a member of The Authors Guild, PEN, and the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. She resides in Western Massachusetts and on Cape Cod.
Awards
Aesthetica Creative Writing Award, Fiction Winner 2015. ASPCA Henry Bergh Children’s Book Award for Saying Goodbye to Lulu. Finalist, Massachusetts Book Award 2001, The Disappearing Island. PEN Syndicated Fiction Competition winner. Lawrence Foundation Prize for the best story to appear in Michigan Quarterly Review. Breakthrough Contest winner, University of Missouri Press. National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships. Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship.
Publications
Books
Returning to Shore (YA novel), Carolrhoda Lab/Lerner Publishing Group, 2014
Everything I Was (YA novel), Carolrhoda Lab/Lerner Publishing Group, 2011
The Writing Circle (novel), Hyperion/Voice, July 2010. Paperback, 2011. German edition: Das Herz de Täuschung, Diana Verlag, 2012. The Donkeys Postpone Gratification (poetry collection), Finishing Line Press, 2009. Great American Short Stories: From Hawthorne to Hemingway (editor), Barnes & Noble Classics Series, 2004. Eleven Stories High: Growing Up in Stuyvesant Town, 1948—1968 (memoir), State University of New York Press, 2000. Paperback,2002. If Ever I Return Again (middle-grade novel), HarperCollins, 2000. French edition: Si Je Reviens, Bayard Jeunesse, 2002. What We Save for Last (short story collection), Milkweed Editions, 1992. Daffodils or the Death of Love (short story collection), University of Missouri Press, 1983. The Same River Twice (novel), Athenaeum, 1982.