Author Guide · Memoir & Essays
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Vivian Gornick was born in the Bronx in 1935 and grew up in a tenement full of women, with a father who pressed clothes in a garment factory and Communist politics at the kitchen table. She reported for The Village Voice from 1969 to 1977, where her essay “The Next Great Moment in History Is Theirs” announced the New York Radical Feminists. Her memoir Fierce Attachments (1987) follows her and her mother, Bess, walking through Manhattan and arguing; in 2019 critics at The New York Times named it the best memoir of the previous fifty years. In 2021, at 85, she won a Windham-Campbell Prize for nonfiction. This guide covers her 12 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 12 key books · 1973–2021 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Vivian Gornick has published about sixteen books. The best known are Fierce Attachments (1987), a memoir of her mother, The Situation and the Story (2001), on the craft of personal narrative, and The Odd Woman and the City (2015). Start with Fierce Attachments; then follow whichever strand pulls you: memoir, criticism, or her reporting on feminism and American communism.
Where to Start with Vivian Gornick
If you want her defining book
→ Fierce Attachments (1987) — the memoir of walking with her mother.
If you want to write memoir or essays yourself
→ The Situation and the Story (2001) — her short book on the craft.
If you want New York and a life lived alone
→ The Odd Woman and the City (2015).
If you want politics and history
→ The Romance of American Communism (1977) — interviews with former American Communists.
12 Vivian Gornick Books, in Order
In Search of Ali Mahmoud
Her first book of her own: an account of her time in Egypt, written as a Jewish American woman among the Egyptians she got to know there. It was nominated for the National Book Award in 1974.
The Romance of American Communism
Built on interviews Gornick did in the mid-1970s with former members of the Communist Party USA, starting from the Party members and fellow travellers she remembered at her family’s kitchen table in the Bronx. Irving Howe reviewed it harshly in The New York Review of Books. Verso reissued it with a new introduction in 2020.
Essays in Feminism
A collection of her essays on feminism, from the years when she was reporting on the women’s movement for The Village Voice.
Fierce Attachments
Gornick and her widowed mother, Bess, walk through Manhattan and fight, while the book cuts back to her 1950s childhood in a Bronx tenement: her father’s death when she was 13, her mother’s long grief, and Nettie, the widowed neighbour who taught the teenage Vivian about men. In 2019 critics at The New York Times named it the best memoir of the past fifty years.
Approaching Eye Level
A collection of personal essays and observations, published by Beacon Press, in the first-person voice she would develop in her later memoirs.
The End of the Novel of Love
Essays on novelists and their lives, published by Beacon Press, built around one argument: that romantic love no longer works as the central metaphor of serious fiction. It was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism.
The Situation and the Story
A short book on how memoirs and personal essays work, drawn from her teaching and from close readings of other memoirists and essayists. Its central distinction, between the situation a writer describes and the story they have come to tell, is widely taught in writing courses.
The Men in My Life
Essays on male writers whose work mattered to her, read from the position of a feminist reader who still loves them, published by MIT Press. It was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism.
Emma Goldman
A short biography of the anarchist and political activist Emma Goldman, published by Yale University Press. It was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award.
The Odd Woman and the City
A memoir in short pieces, loosely built around her friendship with Leonard, “a witty, intelligent gay man” with whom she keeps meaning to meet more often, and her encounters with strangers on the streets of New York. The title points to George Gissing’s novel The Odd Women and its heroine Rhoda Nunn, a woman who refuses marriage.
Unfinished Business
Gornick rereads books she first loved decades earlier and records how differently they read at each stage of her life, and what that says about who she was when she first read them.
Taking a Long Look
A collection from Verso of essays and reviews written over about forty years, on literature, culture, feminism and politics.
In What Order to Read Vivian Gornick
Nothing in Gornick continues a plot from one book to the next, but the same material comes back: her mother, the Bronx tenement, the Communist kitchen table, feminism, living alone in New York, and rereading. Fierce Attachments introduces most of it, which is why it is the best first book.
After that, read by strand. For memoir, go on to The Odd Woman and the City. For her thinking about writing, The Situation and the Story. For criticism, The End of the Novel of Love and Unfinished Business. The early reporting, from The Romance of American Communism to Essays in Feminism, explains where the later voice came from.
A reading path
1. Fierce Attachments (1987)
2. The Odd Woman and the City (2015)
3. The Situation and the Story (2001)
4. The Romance of American Communism (1977)
5. Unfinished Business (2020)
Everything Else Vivian Gornick Published
Beyond the 12 key books: 4 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Other books and edited volumes
4
4 books · 1971–2009
- 1971Woman in Sexist Society: Studies in Power and Powerlessnessan anthology edited with Barbara K. Moran
- 1983Women in Science: Portraits from a World in Transitionprofiles of women working in science
- 2005The Solitude of Self: Thinking About Elizabeth Cady Stantona short book on the American suffragist
- 2009Women in Science: Then and Nowan updated edition from the Feminist Press
The years · 1935–2021
Quick facts about Vivian Gornick
- Known for
- Writing memoir and personal essays in which her own life, above all her relationship with her mother, becomes a way of thinking about women, work and independence
- 1935
- Born in the Bronx, New York
- 1969
- Reporter at The Village Voice
- 2021
- Windham-Campbell Prize for nonfiction
- Born
- 14 June 1935, the Bronx, New York City, to Jewish immigrant parents
- Education
- City College of New York (BA, 1957); New York University (MA, 1960)
- Worked
- The Village Voice, 1969–1977; taught writing at The New School
- Fellowships
- Guggenheim Fellowship (1990); Radcliffe Institute, Harvard (2007–2008)
- Honours
- Windham-Campbell Prize for nonfiction (2021)
- Lives
- New York City
The red mark is 1987: Fierce Attachments, her memoir of her mother.
How Vivian Gornick Writes: The Situation and the Story
Gornick’s own account of her method is in The Situation and the Story: every piece of writing has a situation, the circumstances, and a story, “the thing one has come to say”. Her books are built that way. In Fierce Attachments the situation is a series of walks with her mother; the story is how a daughter both copies and resists the woman who raised her.
Structurally she works in fragments. Fierce Attachments cuts between present-day walks in Manhattan and scenes from the Bronx tenement of the 1950s; The Odd Woman and the City is made of short vignettes, overheard exchanges with strangers and conversations with her friend Leonard. Her criticism uses the same first person: Unfinished Business is as much about who she was at each reading as about the books.
She has been open that memoir, for her, is shaped rather than transcribed. She calls it “personal narrative” rather than journalism, and in 2003 she said publicly that some scenes and conversations in Fierce Attachments were “composed”, a remark that started a debate about how much licence a memoirist can take.
Watch
Vivian Gornick in Conversation with Anna Guitart
Vivian Gornick talks with journalist Anna Guitart at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona during the Primera Persona festival in May 2018, about Fierce Attachments, fiction and nonfiction, and her feminist activism. From the official CCCB channel.
Frequently asked questions about Vivian Gornick’s books
How many books has Vivian Gornick written?
About sixteen, including one anthology she co-edited. Twelve are the key books on this page, from In Search of Ali Mahmoud (1973) to Taking a Long Look (2021); the others are listed under “Everything else”.
What are Vivian Gornick’s books in order?
In Search of Ali Mahmoud (1973), The Romance of American Communism (1977), Essays in Feminism (1978), Fierce Attachments (1987), Approaching Eye Level (1996), The End of the Novel of Love (1997), The Situation and the Story (2001), The Men in My Life (2008), Emma Goldman: Revolution as a Way of Life (2011), The Odd Woman and the City (2015), Unfinished Business (2020) and Taking a Long Look (2021).
Where should I start with Vivian Gornick?
With Fierce Attachments (1987), her memoir of walking through Manhattan with her mother. If you write yourself, The Situation and the Story (2001) is the natural second book.
What is Vivian Gornick’s most famous book?
Fierce Attachments (1987). In 2019 critics at The New York Times Book Review chose it as the best memoir of the past fifty years.
What is Fierce Attachments about?
Gornick and her mother, Bess, walking through Manhattan as adults and arguing, cut with memories of her 1950s childhood in a Bronx tenement: her father’s death when she was 13, her mother’s grief, and their widowed neighbour Nettie.
What is The Situation and the Story about?
It is a short guide to writing memoir and personal essays, based on her teaching. Its key idea is that every piece has a situation (the circumstances) and a story (the emotional experience or insight the writer has come to convey).
Did Vivian Gornick invent parts of Fierce Attachments?
At a Goucher College seminar in July 2003 she said some walks and conversations in the book were “composed” and that she had used composite characters in some Village Voice pieces, as Salon reported. Days later she denied making anything up in the memoir and denied using composites at the Voice, while repeating that conversations and circumstances were composed. She describes memoir as personal narrative, not journalism.
What prizes has Vivian Gornick won?
A Windham-Campbell Prize for nonfiction in 2021 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1990. In Search of Ali Mahmoud was nominated for the National Book Award, and The End of the Novel of Love and The Men in My Life were in contention for the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism.
Is Vivian Gornick still alive?
Yes. She was born on 14 June 1935 in the Bronx and lives in New York City; in February 2026 she gave an interview to The New York Review of Books.
Was Vivian Gornick a Communist?
She grew up in a family shaped by Communist politics and has called herself a “red diaper baby”. The Romance of American Communism (1977) is her book about former Party members.
Footnotes
- Vivian Gornick — Wikipedia
- Vivian Gornick — Windham-Campbell Prizes
- Eight writers awarded Yale’s Windham-Campbell Prizes — Yale News, 2021
- Gornick’s truth — Salon, 2003
- Review: The Odd Woman and the City — The New Republic, 2015
- Home Free: Vivian Gornick — The New York Review of Books, 2026
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Every work of literature has both a situation and a story. The situation is the context or circumstance, sometimes the plot; the story is the emotional experience that preoccupies the writer: the insight, the wisdom, the thing one has come to say.”
— Vivian Gornick, The Situation and the Story (2001)
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