Anne Fadiman | |
|---|---|
 Fadiman in September 2010 | |
| Born | (1953-08-07)August 7, 1953 (age 71) New York City, US |
| Alma mater | Harvard University |
| Occupation(s) | Essayist, reporter, and teacher |
| Employer | Yale University |
| Spouse | George Howe Colt |
| Children | 2[1] |
| Parent(s) | Clifton Fadiman (father) Annalee Jacoby Fadiman (mother) |
| Awards | National Book Critics Circle Award (1997) |
Anne Fadiman (born August 7, 1953) is an American essayist and reporter. Her interests includeliterary journalism, essays, memoir, and autobiography.[2] She has received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current Interest, and the Salon Book Award.
She is the daughter ofClifton Fadiman, who was active in the literary, radio, and television worlds, andAnnalee Jacoby Fadiman, aWorld War II correspondent and author.[3] She attendedHarvard University, graduating in 1975 fromRadcliffe College with a bachelor of arts degree.[4] At Harvard, she roomed withWendy Lesser, a future writer. (Benazir Bhutto andKathleen Kennedy lived in the same dorm).[1]
Fadiman has had a career in reporting and writing. Her 1997 bookThe Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures won the 1997National Book Critics Circle Award, theLos Angeles Times Book Prize for Current Interest, and theSalon Book Award. She conducted research in a small county hospital in California, and examined the cultural and medical issues of aHmong family fromLaos who had a child withepilepsy. Their efforts to get treatment for the child were constrained by cultural, linguistic, and medical differences as well as limitation of theAmerican medical system. Their culture had a different explanation for epilepsy.[5]
She also wrote two books of essays. The first,Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, was published in 1998. The second,At Large and At Small: Familiar Essays (2007), touched on such topics as Arctic explorers,Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and ice cream; it was the source of a quotation inThe New York Times SundayAcrostic.[2]
She editedRereadings: Seventeen Writers Revisit Books They Love (2005) and theBest American Essays 2003.[2]
Fadiman has published a memoir about her relationship with her father,The Wine Lover's Daughter (2017).
Fadiman was a founding editor of theLibrary of Congress magazineCivilization.
She was the fourth editor of thePhi Beta Kappa quarterlyThe American Scholar since 1997. Under her direction, it won threeNational Magazine Awards in six years. She leftThe American Scholar in 2004; she was paid an annual salary of $60,000, and was in the midst of a dispute over budgetary issues. At the time of her departure, the journal faced a budget deficit of about $250,000; its circulation was about 28,000.[6]
Since January 2005, in a program established by Yale alumnusPaul E. Francis, Anne Fadiman has beenYale University's first Francis Writer in Residence, a position that allows her to teach one or two non-fiction writing seminars each year, and advise, mentor, and interact with students and editors of undergraduate publications.[7][8]
In 2012 she received theRichard H. Brodhead '68 Prize for Teaching Excellence by Non-Ladder Faculty.[9]
Fadiman is married to American authorGeorge Howe Colt. They have two children and a dog named Typo.[1]
