Melissa Bank, witty, bestselling author, dies at 61

NEW YORK (AP) - Melissa Bank, whose 1999 bestseller 'œThe Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing" was a series of interconnected stories widely praised for its wit and precise language and embraced by young readers, has died at age 61.

Viking Books announced that Bank died Tuesday in East Hampton, New York. She had lung cancer.

Bank was a Philadelphia native with a master's degree from Cornell University whose influences ranged from Vladimir Nabokov to Grace Paley. She needed 12 years to finish 'œThe Girls' Guide," in part because of a bicycle accident that damaged her short-term memory and ability to think of words. But her book, which follows a young woman's life from adolescence to adulthood, was a critical and commercial success.

'œBank draws exquisite portraits of loneliness, and can do it in a sentence," Newsweek's Yahlin Chang wrote.

Two stories from 'œThe Girls' Guide" were adapted into the 2007 romantic comedy "Suburban Girl,'' starring Alec Baldwin and Sarah Michelle Gellar.

Bank also wrote the comic story collection 'œThe Wonder Spot," in which she traced a woman's efforts to find her place in the world, and her writings appeared in Ploughshares and Zoetrope among other publications. She also taught in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton.