Stacy Schiff

Stacy Madeleine Schiff (born October 26, 1961) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American nonfiction author and guest columnist for The New York Times.

Biography

Schiff, born in Adams, Massachusetts, is a graduate of Phillips Academy (Andover) preparatory school, and earned her B.A. degree from Williams College in 1982. She was a senior editor at Simon & Schuster until 1990. Her essays and articles have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times and The Times Literary Supplement. She is a contributor to The New York Times Book Review.

Schiff won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for Vera, a biography of Vera Nabokov, wife and muse of Vladimir Nabokov. She was also a finalist for the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for Saint-Exupéry: A Biography of Antoine de Saint Exupéry.

Schiff’s A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America (2005) won the George Washington Book Prize. Her fourth book, Cleopatra: A Life, was published to great acclaim in 2010. As the Wall Street Journal's reviewer put it, "Schiff does a rare thing: She gives us a book we'd miss if it didn't exist." The New Yorker termed the book "a work of literature;" Simon Winchester predicted "it will become a classic." Ron Chernow may explain why: "Even if forced to at gunpoint, Stacy Schiff would be incapable of writing a dull page or a lame sentence." Cleopatra appeared on most year-end best books lists, including the New York Times's Top Ten Books of 2010, and won the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for biography. A #1 bestseller, it was translated into 30 languages.

Little, Brown published The Witches: Salem, 1692 in 2015. The New York Times hailed it as "an almost novelistic, thriller-like narrative." David McCullough declared the book—also a #1 bestseller--"brilliant from start to finish."

A guest columnist at The New York Times, Schiff resides in New York City. She is a trustee of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Awards and honors

• National Endowment for the Humanities, fellowship
• Cullman Center for Scholars & Writers, New York Public Library, Director's Fellow,
• John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, fellowship
• 1995 Pulitzer Prize finalist, Saint-Exupéry: A Biography
• 2000 Pulitzer Prize, Vera
• 2006 Academy Award in Literature, American Academy of Arts and Letters
• 2006 Gilbert Chinard Prize, A Great Improvisation
• 2006 George Washington Book Prize, A Great Improvisation
• 2006 Ambassador Book Award (American Studies), A Great Improvisation
• 2010 EMMA Award for journalistic excellence, "Who's Buried in Cleopatra's Tomb?"
• 2011 Library Lion by the New York Public Library
• 2011 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography, Cleopatra
• 2012 Phillips Academy Alumni Award of Distinction
• 2012 The French-American Foundation Vergennes Achievement Award
• 2013 Honorary Doctor of Letters from Williams College
• 2014 BIO Award, Biographers International Organization
• 2015 Newberry Library Award
• 2016 Associates of the Boston Public Library Literary Light Award

• ^ "ALOUD: Lectures, Readings, Performances, & Discussions (Los Angeles Central Library)". 

Works

Books

• Schiff, Stacy (1994). Saint-Exupéry: A Biography. New York: A.A. Knopf. ISBN 0-679-40310-8. 

(Nominated for the 1995 Pulitzer Prize)

• Schiff, Stacy (1999). Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov). Pan Books Ltd. ISBN 0-330-37674-8. 

(Winner of 2000 Pulitzer Prize)

• Schiff, Stacy (2005). A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America. New York: Henry Holt. ISBN 0-8050-6633-0.  (Published in the UK as Dr Franklin Goes to France
• Schiff, Stacy (2010). Cleopatra: A Life. Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 0-316-00192-9. 
• Schiff, Stacy (2015), The Witches: Salem, 1692 (2015). New York: Little, Brown. ISBN 9780316200615.

Selected essays and articles

• "The Witches of Salem". New Yorker. August 31, 2015. 
• "Desperately Seeking Susan". New York Times. October 13, 2006. 
• Schiff, Stacy (2007-10-14). "Founding Chauvinist Pig?". New York Times. Retrieved 2007-10-24. 

(Review of Jon Kukla (2007-10-09). Mr. Jefferson's Women. Knopf. ISBN 1-4000-4324-7. )

• "Cleopatra's Guide to Good Governance." New York Times, December 4, 2010
• "Eternal Flame – 'Country Girl: A Memoir,' by Edna O'Brien". New York Times. May 10, 2013. 
• "The Interactive Truth". New York Times. June 15, 2005. 
• "Camp Stories (review of Nathan Englander's What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank)". New York Times Sunday Book Review. February 16, 2012. 

• "1995 Finalists". The Pulitzer Prizes – Columbia University. 
• "2000 Winners". The Pulitzer Prizes – Columbia University.