Grealy taught at Bennington College and New School University and published poetry in various magazines. Grealy a Whiting Award, given to provide financial support to young writers of exceptional talent. The book, which sold well, was published internationally and widely adopted in high school and college curriculums. She felt she had gotten her message out, that she had found herself, that her face had become acceptable, Ms. She spent 1991-92 on a Bunting Fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study, where she completed her memoir.Īs a result of publishing her book, Ms. in 1985 at Sarah Lawrence College, where her interest in reading and writing poetry deepened, and in 1987 went to the Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa. She graduated in 1981 from Spring Valley High School, earned a B.A. ''When my face gets fixed, then I'll start living,'' she said she told herself.
Grealy felt at first that by suffering heroically, ''I could save the entire family.'' But as her endless and crushingly expensive ordeal continued, she realized that her face, more than her own and her family's fortune, was her very self-image and life. Grealy stayed home, rearing the children. Grealy commuted to work as a producer for ABC and CBS in New York, while Mrs. They had been well-known journalists in Ireland - her father had helped found RTE, Ireland's national broadcasting organization - and then they felt stuck in the suburbs. In addition to her twin, Sarah Louise Barasch, she is survived by her mother and two siblings who live in London, her brother Nicholas and her sister Suellen Grealy Vlaveanos.Īfter settling the family in Spring Valley, N.Y., her parents saw themselves as fallen aristocrats. Her family immigrated to the United States in 1967 when she was 4. She and her twin sister, Sarah Louise, were the youngest of five children, who included her older brothers, Sean and Nicholas, and another sister, Suellen. Lucinda Margaret Grealy, whose last name is pronounced GRAY-lee, was born in Dublin to Desmond and Trena Anne Grealy. Older boys at her school would yell, ''That is the ugliest girl I have ever seen.'' She herself concluded, ''I was too ugly to go to school.''īut she was also proud and determined, Ms. Over the next 18 years she underwent about 30 more operations to rebuild her face.
But with radiation and chemotherapy, she survived. After several more operations, half her jaw was gone, and only flesh remained on the lower right side of her face.
Grealy described how she underwent surgery at 9 for what seemed to be a dental cyst, but which led to a diagnosis of Ewing's sarcoma, a rare and virulent cancer.
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