Anna Quindlen

Bestselling Author | Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist
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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.”
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.”
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.
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.

Topics

Women in the 21st Century: The Balancing Act

The greatest social revolution of our lifetime has been the changing status of women in America and around the world. They now make-up more than half of our workforce, and dominate medical, law and journalism schools. So why has it been so hard for women to find balance between old roles and new ones? Why are so many of us feeling like there’s been great change, but not change enough? And where do men fit in?

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Why Media Matters

Here’s a counterintuitive view — although the entire landscape of newspapers, magazines and television has changed, and many feel changed for the worse, journo veteran Quindlen argues that because of the internet it is easier to be well-informed now than at any time in history. The challenge is to learn how to be our own aggregators, to not only figure out a useful media diet but to assess what’s nourishing and what’s junk food.

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Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake

You’d never know it, hearing about hip replacements and sagging skin, but survey after survey shows that older people are happier with their daily lives than their younger counterparts. And of course there are more of them; while the average life expectancy a hundred years ago was 56, today it’s nearly 80. That’s changed so much, in the way we work, live, think of ourselves and of the human condition. Is 70 the new 50, or is it just a brand new 70, with new rules and attitudes? And how can we take advantage of that change?

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How Reading and Writing will Ensure our Democracy

It’s no accident that Hitler ordered book burnings and enslaved men and women were denied literacy as well as freedom. Reading and writing break down the walls between people and bring down the big lies of demagoguery. That’s why a literate United States is a more tolerant and democratic United States, and why a thirst for words, for consuming and using them, may be the greatest legacy we hand down to our kids.

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Being Human: The Challenge for Health Care

It is a conundrum, that the better we have gotten at tackling many illnesses and conditions, the farther doctors and nurses have sometimes moved away from the people who have them. Transplanting hearts is an occasional miracle, but touching hearts should be done every day. Looking at a patient chart on the screen of a tablet doesn’t come close to looking a person in the eye. The same technology that enables us an unprecedented view inside the human body sometimes distances health care professionals from the spirit within that body. But both doctors and patients will benefit if we can change that, and the personal touch in other professions can show us how.

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Videos

Anna Quindlen on writing "After Annie"
Anna Quindlen
A Short Guide to a Happy Life
Anna Quindlen
Kate and Charlie Gibson chat with author Anna Quindlen | Good Morning America
Anna Quindlen
Turning 50 and not giving a damn what anyone else thinks
Anna Quindlen
Overcoming Loss, Creating a Second Act in Life and One Trick to Keep Writing
Anna Quindlen
Marriage, Motherhood and Getting Men to Pick Up More of the Slack!
Anna Quindlen

Articles

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Unforgettable Women: A Guest Post by Anna Quindlen
B&N Reads
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CBS New York Book Club bonus read: "After Annie" by Anna Quindlen
CBS News
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Barnes & Noble Presents After Annie by Anna Quindlen as Their March 2024 National Book Club Selection
Barnes & Noble
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Anna Quindlen Is Back, With Four Seasons of Loss and Survival
New York Times
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Anna Quindlen Wants You to Get a Good Life
Publishers Weekly
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Why Writing Is for Everyone
The Saturday Evening Post
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The Power of Writing by Hand
Literary Hub
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Writing a Different Ending for Your Life
Saturday Evening Post

Podcasts

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