Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information. Alice Adams was an American novelist, short story writer, academic and university professor. She was born in Fredericksburg, Virginia and attended Radcliffe College, graduating in 1946. She married, and had a child, but her marriage broke up, and she spent several years as a single mother, working as a secretary. Her psychiatrist told her to give up writing and get remarried; instead she published her first novel, Careless Love (1966), and a few years later she published her first short story in The New Yorker. She wrote many novels but she's best known for her short stories, in collections such as After You've Gone (1989) and The Last Lovely City (1999). She won numerous awards including the O. Henry Award, and Best American Short Stories Award.