Eugenides was born in Detroit, Michigan of Greek and Irish descent. He attended Grosse Pointe's private University Liggett School. He took his undergraduate degree at Brown University, graduating in 1983. He later earned an M.A. in Creative Writing from Stanford University.

In 1986 he received the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Nicholl Fellowship for his story "Here Comes Winston, Full of the Holy Spirit". His 1993 novel, The Virgin Suicides, gained mainstream interest with the 1999 film adaptation directed by Sofia Coppola. The novel was reissued in 2009.

Eugenides is reluctant to appear in public or disclose details about his private life, except through Michigan-area book signings in which he details the influence of Detroit and his high-school experiences on his writings. He has said that he has been haunted by the decline of Detroit.

Jeffrey Eugenides lives in Princeton, New Jersey with his wife, the photographer and sculptor Karen Yamauchi, and their daughter. In the fall of 2007, Eugenides joined the faculty of Princeton University's Program in Creative Writing.

His 2002 novel, Middlesex, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the Ambassador Book Award. Part of it was set in Berlin, Germany, where Eugenides lived from 1999 to 2004, but it was chiefly concerned with the Greek-American immigrant experience in the United States, against the rise and fall of Detroit. It explores the experience of the intersexed in the USA. Eugenides has also published short stories.

Eugenides is the editor of the collection of short stories titled My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead. The proceeds of the collection go to the writing center 826 Chicago, established to encourage young people's writing.

• "Air Mail" (Best American Short Stories, Proulx ed., Houghton Mifflin, 1997)
• "The Speed of Sperm" (Granta, 1997)
• "Timeshare" (The Pushcart Prize XXIII, Henderson ed., Pushcart, 1999)
• "Baster" (Wonderful Town, Remnick ed., Random House 2000)
• "The Ancient Myths" (The Spatial Uncanny, James Casebere, Sean Kelly Gallery, 2001)
• "Early Music" (The New Yorker, Oct. 10, 2005)
• "Great Experiment" (The New Yorker, Mar. 31, 2008)
• Editor, My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead: Great Love Stories from Chekhov to Munro, (anthology, 2008) (ISBN 978-0061240379)
• "Extreme Solitude" (The New Yorker, Jun. 7, 2010)

Online Short Stories

• "At the Drive-in", The New Yorker, 11 June 2007
• Full text of "Timeshare", Conjunctions, Spring 1997
• "Great Experiment", The New Yorker, 31 March 2008
• Read "Extreme Solitude" story in New Yorker

Interviews

• Video of Eugenides with Salman Rushdie, "LIVE", New York Public Library, June 27, 2008
• Video of Eugenides with Daniel Kehlmann, PEN World Voices, May 4, 2008
• Fresh Air, "Interview with Terry Gross", WHYY, aired on 2002-09-24
• "Interview", 3am Magazine, 2003
• "Interview", Bomb Magazine
• "Interview", Powells.com
• Salon.com interview
• "Interview", Guardian Unlimited Books
• "Interview", READ Magazine
• Interview by Jonathan Safran Foer

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