{{short description|American writer}}
'''Faith McNulty''' (November 28, 1918 – April 10, 2005) was an American non-fiction author, probably best known for her 1980 literary journalism genre book ''The Burning Bed''. She is also known for her authorship of wildlife pieces and books, including children's books.
==Biography== Faith Trumbull Corrigan was born in New York City,<ref name=NYSLTree/> November 28, 1918. She was the daughter of a judge. She attended Barnard College for one year,<ref name=NYSLTree/> then attended Rhode Island State College. But she dropped out of college once she got a job as a copy girl at the ''New York Daily News''. She later went to work for ''Life'' magazine. She worked for the United States Office of War Information in London during World War II.
McNulty was a staff writer at ''The New Yorker'' magazine from 1953 to 1994.<ref name=NYSLTree/> In 1980, a collection of her ''New Yorker'' work was published as ''The Wildlife Stories of Faith McNulty''.<ref name=NYSLTree/> For many years, she edited the annual ''New Yorker'' compilation of the year's best children's books.
She also frequently wrote children's books on wildlife, including ''How to Dig a Hole to the Other Side of the World'' in 1979 and ''When I Lived With Bats'' in 1998. Her 1966 book ''The Whooping Crane: The Bird that Defies Distinction'' was written for adults.
Her husband, John McNulty, was also a writer<ref name=NYSLTree/> for ''The New Yorker'' and with Thomas Wolfe, Truman Capote, Gay Talese and James Baldwin, a major figure in the development of the literary genre of Creative nonfiction, which is also known as literary journalism or literature in fact. As earlier here noted, having herself been years exposed to Harold Ross' New Yorker magazine's rarefied environment, which was then so promoting of this evolving genre, Faith's own major nonfiction work, ''The Burning Bed'', is, itself, a quintessential and quality example of the genre of literary journalism or, as Thomas Wolfe once labeled it, the “New Journalism”. After her husband John died in 1956, Faith remarried, to Richard Martin, a set designer and an inventive designer of set props.
''The Burning Bed'' was based on the true story of Francine Hughes, who set fire to the bedroom in which her husband was sleeping. Hughes defended herself by saying that her husband had been abusing her for 13 years. The jury at her trial ruled that she had been temporarily insane, and she was found not guilty.
Faith had fonder memories of life with kinder family, however. ''"I can remember my father in his nightshirt, digging for worms for the baby robin in the bathroom. That's the kind of household it was; I had woodchucks in the bathroom, cats, squirrels, chipmunks"'', McNulty once said.
Towards the end of her life, she wrote a weekly column for ''The Providence Journal'' on a local animal shelter run by the Animal Welfare League. Her mother had founded the Animal Welfare League in southern Rhode Island. McNulty had long been known for taking in stray animals at her farm.
She suffered a stroke in 2004. She died at her farm in Wakefield, Rhode Island.
McNulty's last book was illustrated by Steven Kellogg and published by Scholastic Books in 2005, ''If You Decide to Go to the Moon''—a picture book written in the second person.<ref name=LCC/> The next year, it won a major "year's best" children's literary award, the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award for Nonfiction.<ref name=bghb2011/>
==Selected works== *''How to Dig a Hole to the Other Side of the World'' *''Dancing with Manatees'' *''The Burning Bed'' *''''The Wildlife Stories of Faith McNulty'' *''Peeping in the Shell: A Whooping Crane Is Hatched'' *''Arty The Smarty'' *''Why Must They Die? The strange case of the prairie dog and the black-footed ferret'' *''Whales: Their Life in the Sea'' *''Listening to Whales Sing'' *''How Whales Walked into the Sea'' *''The Elephant Who Couldn't Forget''<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/faith-mcnulty-3/the-elephant-who-couldnt-forget/ |title=The Elephant Who Couldn't Forget |website=www.kirkusreviews.com |publisher=Kirkus Media LLC |quote=one has to admire the way McNulty weaves all the elements together, calling attention to none and ending up with a more than usually rounded composite. Simont's pictures are soft and agreeable; and he outdoes himself with the expressions of the dowager Manyara. |accessdate=July 30, 2016}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-06-444128-5 |title=The Elephant Who Couldn't Forget |website=www.publishersweekly.com |publisher=PWxyz LLC |quote=Congo, the smallest elephant in his family and the star of this amusing, fact-based I Can Read, discovers that having an excellent memory and remembering to hold a grudge are two different things. |accessdate=July 30, 2016}}</ref> *''Endangered Animals'' *''The Great Whales'' *''Hurricane'' *''If Dogs Ruled the World'' *''The Lady and the Spider'' *''Mouse and Tim'' *''Orphan: The Story of a Baby Woodchuck'' *''Playing With Dolphins'' *''Red Wolves'' *''The Silly Story of a Flea and His Dog'' *''A Snake in the House''<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/faith-mcnulty/a-snake-in-the-house/ |title=A Snake In The House |date=January 1, 1994 |website=www.kirkusreviews.com |publisher=Kirkus Media LLC |quote=Uncommonly attractive and carefully wrought |accessdate=July 30, 2016}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-590-44758-4 |title=A Snake In The House |website=www.publishersweekly.com |publisher=PWxyz LLC |quote=Sun-dappled watercolors illuminate this ecologically minded prose poem. |accessdate=July 30, 2016}}</ref> *''With Love from Koko'' *''Woodchuck'' * ''If You Decide to Go to the Moon'', illustrated by Steven Kellogg (Scholastic, 2005)<ref name=bghb2011/><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.jewishla.org/koreh-la/blog-entry/book-review-end-of-the-year-and-summer-reading/ |title=Book Review: End-of-the-Year and Summer Reading - If You Decide to Go to the Moon by Faith McNulty |date=May 15, 2014 |website=www.jewishla.org |publisher=The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles |quote=Beautifully illustrated and full of scientific information |accessdate=July 30, 2016}}</ref> <ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/faith-mcnulty/if-you-decide-to-go-to-the-moon/ |title=If You Decide To Go To The Moon |date=September 1, 2005 |website=www.kirkusreviews.com |publisher=Kirkus Media LLC |quote=A powerful, playful tribute to the minutiae and magnificence of space exploration. |accessdate=July 30, 2016}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-590-48359-9 |title=If You Decide to Go the Moon |website=www.publishersweekly.com |publisher=PWxyz LLC |quote= impressive picture book |accessdate=July 30, 2016}}</ref>
==References== {{Reflist |25em |refs= <ref name=NYSLTree> [http://www.nyslittree.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/DB.PersonDetail/PersonPK/1547.cfm "Person Detail: Faith Corrigan McNulty"]. New York State Literary Tree (nyslittree.org). Retrieved 2014-09-29.</ref>
<!-- last book and posthumous award; Comment continues below --> <ref name=LCC> [http://lccn.loc.gov/2004027755 "If you decide to go to the moon {...}"]. Library of Congress Online Catalog (catalog.loc.gov). Retrieved 2014-09-29. With linked "publisher description" and "contributor biographical information".</ref> <ref name=bghb2011> {{cite magazine |url=http://archive.hbook.com/bghb/past/past.asp |title=Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards Winners and Honor Books 1967 to present |date=2011 |magazine=The Horn Book |access-date=2014-09-29 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121214080902/http://archive.hbook.com/bghb/past/past.asp |archive-date=2012-12-14 }} With linked acceptance speech (audio only, MP3) by Steven Kellogg, illustrator of the winning book; writer McNulty was deceased.</ref> <!-- (above) The BGHB award was posthumous for McNulty. This list of past winners (not maintained, there is another) provides links to some acceptance speeches including one by her illustrator Kellogg --likely worth a listen but audio unavailable to this editor now. -->
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==External links== *[http://scindependent.com/content/articles/2005/04/15/local/estory.jpg Photograph of Faith McNulty in 2003]{{dead link|date=December 2017 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }} *{{isfdb name|10370}} *{{LCAuth|n79023118|Faith McNulty|31}}
{{Portal |Children's literature}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:McNulty, Faith}} Category:1918 births Category:2005 deaths Category:American non-fiction children's writers Category:American nature writers Category:People of the United States Office of War Information Category:American women civilians in World War II