Christina McDowell

Christina McDowell (Born March 14, 1985) is an American author, actress, and filmmaker, best known for her debut novel, After Perfect.

Early life

McDowell was born on March 14, 1985 in Washington, D.C. to Gayle and Tom Prousalis, a securities lawyer for Stratton Oakmont, Inc. founded by Jordan Belfort. She had a privileged upbringing as the middle of three sisters and the family resided in McLean, Virginia around the corner from the Kennedy Estate, Hickory Hill.  McDowell attended St Andrew's Episcopal High School located just outside of Washington D.C. and matriculated at, though did not graduate from, Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. She was forced to drop out after her freshman year due to her family's financial troubles.

At the age of 18, during her first year of college, McDowell's father was arrested for securities fraud, ordered to pay $12.8 million to those he defrauded, and spent five years in federal prison.

Writing

On December 26, 2013, McDowell penned an op-ed for the LA Weekly criticizing Hollywood film The Wolf of Wall Street and lambasting Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese for glorifying greed and "psychopathic behavior" that destroyed families like her own. Her LA Weekly op-ed went viral receiving more than 3.7 million page views and generating international coverage, including a piece in The Guardian calling international attention to her personal strife and family drama. Less than a month after McDowell's op-ed was initially published, several publishing houses expressed interest in McDowell writing a novel about the events of her life leading up to her father's arrest and her subsequent downward spiral.

Her 2015 memoir, After Perfect, details her family's implosion and her personal experience with poverty, depression, drug addiction, and redemption. One critic wrote that it was "a brutally honest, cautionary tale about one family's destruction in the wake of the Wall Street implosion," and it has also been described as "a rare, insider's perspective on the collateral damage of a fall from grace". The book was listed as a must-read in publications and digital journals including the Village Voice, PopSugar, Oprah's O magazine, and People Magazine. In numerous interviews, McDowell discusses the transformative power of writing and how crafting her memoir was a form of catharsis in the wake of much pain and loss.

After Perfect was published by Gallery Books—an imprint of Simon & Schuster—in 2015 and is currently being adapted for the screen by writer/director Elizabeth Chomko. McDowell is represented by Peter McGuigan of Foundry Literary + Media.

McDowell's second book, The Cave Dwellers, is set to be released by Simon and Schuster in 2020.

Awards and Accolades

The Village Voice: 15 Books You Need to Read in 2015

PopSugar: Best of June

O Magazine: Season's Best Biography and Memoir

People Magazine: Twelve Best Summer Beach Books

Bliss, Beauty, and Beyond: Bachelorette Poolside Picks

Brit and Co: 15 Must Read Books Coming Out This June

Other Work

In the years since her author debut, McDowell has become an advocate for restorative justice and criminal justice reform. Alongside Oscar-nominated producer, Matthew Cooke, McDowell is the co-producer of the documentary, "Survivor's Guide to Prison" about America's mass incarceration crisis, released in 2018. Additionally, she is involved with the non-profit InsideOUT Writers (an organization that helps incarcerated youth by leveraging creative writing as a catalyst for personal transformation), and POPS (an LA-based non-profit that provides support for kids and teens with family members in prison).

Miscellaneous

McDowell owns a small Havanese dog named Zelda Fitzgerald.