“There is little premium in poetry in a world that thinks of Pound and Whitman as a weight and a sampler, not an Ezra, a Walt, or a thing of beauty, a joy forever.”
– Anna Quindlen
Born in Philadelphia on this date in 1952, Quindlen started writing in high school, joining the New York Times staff at age 18 as a copy girl and working her way through Barnard College with her earnings from the paper. After college she spent some time at the New York Post before returning to the Times where she became only the third woman in Times’ history to write a regular column for the Op-Ed Page.
That column, "Public and Private," won her a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary but she left the paper in 1995 to devote herself full time to writing novels. She’s now written 10, all bestsellers including One True Thing, Black and Blue, and Blessings – all made into movies. Her newest is 2024’s After Annie.
Since 2001 she’s also written 13 nonfiction books, the latest being Write for Your Life in 2022.
The mother of three writers (two sons and a daughter, who also is an actress), she once noted, “I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.”
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