Anna Quindlen

Anna Quindlen is a prolific bestselling author, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, and social critic. She is renowned for her nationally syndicated columns offering insightful and reflective commentary on social and political issues ranging from gender equality to current events that seemed to speak to readers directly and help them make sense of their lives. As an author, she holds the distinction of being the first to have books on the New York Times Best Sellers lists for fiction, nonfiction, and self-help. She was named one of the “100 Outstanding Journalists in the United States in the Last 100 Years” and the New York Times Book Review has deemed her “one of our most astute chroniclers of modern life.”

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Quindlen has written over 20 books that span fiction, nonfiction, and children’s literature and have collectively sold nearly 13 million copies and have been translated into 19 languages. Her latest release, After Annie is a novel about the power of love and loss that follows the lives of a husband, daughter, and best friend after the sudden death of the title character. Called “another acute portrait of family life from a virtuoso of the form” by Publishers Weekly, the book is dedicated to Anna’s own mother, who she lost to cancer at just 19 years old. In writing After Annie, Quindlen says she wanted to capture how “after someone you love dies, in some ways they’re more present. When they were alive you could take them for granted. After they’re gone the sense of them crowds in upon you and they live in your heart.”

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Anna’s writing explores the complexities of family, friendship, and womanhood, capturing an authenticity of the human experience that few others have mastered. Her novels include Object Lessons, One True Thing, Black and Blue (an Oprah’s Book Club pick), Blessings, Rise and Shine, Every Last One, Still Life with Bread Crumbs, Miller’s Valley, and Alternate Side. One True Thing was adapted for the big screen and starred Meryl Streep while Black and Blue and Blessings became TV movies. Her memoir Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake was a #1 New York Times bestseller. Her book A Short Guide to a Happy Life has sold more than a million copies. More recent titles include Nanaville: Adventures in Grandparenting and Write for Your Life, a call to pick up a pen and find yourself. Living Out Loud, Thinking Out Loud, and Loud and Clear are collections of popular her columns.

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Alongside her bestselling books, Anna Quindlen has worked as a reporter and maintained many columns throughout her career. She started as a reporter for New York Post, held roles as a reporter, editor, and columnist at the New York Times, and penned a column at Newsweek. She is the third woman ever to become a recurring op-ed columnist for the New York Times and the third woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary, which she received “for her compelling columns on a wide range of personal and political topics” in her Times column “Public and Private.” Quindlen is a graduate of Barnard College, has received honorary degrees from over a dozen colleges, and was inducted to the New Jersey Hall of Fame.