Every other week, millions of readers turn to the back page of Newsweek for Anna Quindlen’s perspectives on events of the day and issues of family, work, education and social justice.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author, Quindlen writes Newsweek’s popular column “The Last Word.” During the past 30 years, her work has appeared in America’s most influential newspapers and magazines and on fiction and nonfiction bestseller lists.

Her novel, Rise and Shine (September 2006), debuted on The New York Times bestsellers list at #1. It is the story of sisters, the sacrifices made due to tragedy and ambition, and the quest to lead an authentic life.

Quindlen's first novel, the critically-acclaimed Object Lessons, was followed by the bestselling One True Thing (which was made into a major motion picture starring Meryl Streep and Rene Zellweger). Black and Blue, her third novel, was also a bestseller and a selection of the Oprah Winfrey Book Club. Her fourth and fifth NYT bestselling novels, Black and Blue and Blessings, were made into television movies starring Mary Stuart Masterson and Mary Tyler Moore.

Quindlen’s non-fiction books include the national bestseller, A Short Guide to a Happy Life, which has sold over one million copies, and her most recent work, Good Dog. Stay. In 2005's Being Perfect (another NYT bestseller), she invited us to laugh at a lifestyle that emphasizes the pursuit of trying to be perfect in the eyes of others, rather than focusing on the most important goal of all: the work of becoming yourself.
 
While a columnist for The New York Times, Quindlen became only the third woman in the paper’s history to write a regular column for its influential Op-Ed page when she began the nationally-syndicated “Public and Private.” A collection of those columns, Thinking Out Loud, was a national bestseller. In Loud & Clear, a collection of her Newsweek and New York Times columns, she combines commentary on American society and the world at large with reflections on being a woman, a writer and a mother.

In 1992 Quindlen was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for commentary. In 1995 she left The Times and journalism to pursue a career as a full-time novelist. She is the author of: the children’s books, The Tree That Came to Stay and Happily Ever After; the coffee table pictorials, Naked Babies and Siblings; How Reading Changed My Life; and Imagined London, in which she takes readers on a tour of her favorite English literary places and characters.
 

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In her lectures, Quindlen provides audiences with insight into today’s issues, ranging from the corporate world’s responsibility to families and the future of journalism to medical ethics and the challenges of raising children.

She is often asked about the differences between being a reporter and a novelist. But she prefers to talk about the similarities, and particularly about the ability of good journalism, vividly and truthfully told, to help us to imagine our world and our place in it.

Striking a delicate balance between the political and personal, Quindlen doesn’t separate national affairs from people’s daily lives, but places them side by side, giving us a more realistic picture of modern life.