Lauren Weisberger
Encyclopedia
Lauren Weisberger is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 novelist and author of the 2003 bestseller The Devil Wears Prada, a speculated roman à clef
Roman à clef
Roman à clef or roman à clé , French for "novel with a key", is a phrase used to describe a novel about real life, overlaid with a façade of fiction. The fictitious names in the novel represent real people, and the "key" is the relationship between the nonfiction and the fiction...

of her real life experience as a put-upon assistant to Vogue
Vogue (magazine)
Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine that is published monthly in 18 national and one regional edition by Condé Nast.-History:In 1892 Arthur Turnure founded Vogue as a weekly publication in the United States. When he died in 1909, Condé Montrose Nast picked up the magazine and slowly began...

editor-in-chief Anna Wintour
Anna Wintour
Anna Wintour, OBE is the British-born editor-in-chief of American Vogue, a position she has held since 1988. With her trademark pageboy bob haircut and sunglasses, Wintour has become an institution throughout the fashion world, widely praised for her eye for fashion trends and her support for...

.

Early and personal life

Weisberger was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania
Scranton, Pennsylvania
Scranton is a city in the northeastern part of Pennsylvania, United States. It is the county seat of Lackawanna County and the largest principal city in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre metropolitan area. Scranton had a population of 76,089 in 2010, according to the U.S...

 to a school teacher mother and a department-store-president turned mortgage-broker father. Her family is Jewish and Weisberger was raised in Conservative Judaism
Conservative Judaism
Conservative Judaism is a modern stream of Judaism that arose out of intellectual currents in Germany in the mid-19th century and took institutional form in the United States in the early 1900s.Conservative Judaism has its roots in the school of thought known as Positive-Historical Judaism,...

 and later Reform Judaism
Reform Judaism
Reform Judaism refers to various beliefs, practices and organizations associated with the Reform Jewish movement in North America, the United Kingdom and elsewhere. In general, it maintains that Judaism and Jewish traditions should be modernized and should be compatible with participation in the...

. She spent her early youth in Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania
Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania
Clarks Summit is a borough in Lackawanna County northwest of Scranton in northeastern Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 5,116 at the 2010 census. It is also the northern terminus of the Pennsylvania Turnpike Northeast Extension, I-476.-History:...

, a small town outside Scranton. At age eleven, her parents divorced and she and her younger sister, Dana, moved to Allentown, Pennsylvania
Allentown, Pennsylvania
Allentown is a city located in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, in the United States. It is Pennsylvania's third most populous city, after Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and the 215th largest city in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 118,032 and is currently...

, in the Lehigh Valley
Lehigh Valley
The Lehigh Valley, known officially by the United States Census Bureau as the Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton, PA-NJ metropolitan area and referred to locally as The Valley and A-B-E, is a metropolitan region consisting of Lehigh, Northampton, Berks, and Carbon counties in eastern Pennsylvania and...

 region of the state, with their mother.

In 1995, she graduated from South Whitehall Township
South Whitehall Township, Pennsylvania
South Whitehall Township is a township in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, in the United States. It is a suburb of Allentown, Pennsylvania, in the Lehigh Valley area of the state. The population of South Whitehall Township was 18,028 at the 2000 census...

's Parkland High School
Parkland High School (Allentown, Pennsylvania)
Parkland High School, located near Allentown, Pennsylvania, United States, is a public high school serving students in grades 9 to 12. It is the only high school for the Parkland School District....

, near Allentown. During her time at Parkland, Weisberger was involved in various activities, including intramural sports, some competitive sports, extra projects, and organizations.

Following her graduation from Parkland High School, she attended Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

 in Ithaca, New York
Ithaca, New York
The city of Ithaca, is a city in upstate New York and the county seat of Tompkins County, as well as the largest community in the Ithaca-Tompkins County metropolitan area...

, where she was an English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 major and a sorority member of Alpha Epsilon Phi
Alpha Epsilon Phi
Alpha Epsilon Phi is a sorority and member of the National Panhellenic Conference. It was founded on October 24, 1909 at Barnard College in New York City by seven Jewish women; Helen Phillips Lipman, Ida Beck Carlin, Rose Gerstein Smolin, Augustina "Tina" Hess Solomon, Lee Reiss Liebert, Rose...

, graduating in 1999. After college, she traveled as a backpacker through Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

, Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

, Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

, Jordan
Jordan
Jordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...

, Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...

, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

, Nepal
Nepal
Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...

, and Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...

. Returning home, she moved to Manhattan and was hired as Wintour's assistant at Vogue. She was there for ten months before leaving along with features editor Richard Story. While she herself said she felt out of place there, the magazine's managing editor, Laurie Jones, said "she seemed to be a perfectly happy, lovely woman".

After leaving the fashion magazine, she wrote 100-word reviews for Departures Magazine
Departures Magazine
Departures is an American lifestyle magazine published by American Express Publishing.Magazine subscription is available only to holders of American Express' Platinum and Centurion charge cards, free of charge....

, an American Express
American Express
American Express Company or AmEx, is an American multinational financial services corporation headquartered in Three World Financial Center, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States. Founded in 1850, it is one of the 30 components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is best...

 publication, before writing her first novel. She also published an article in Playboy
Playboy
Playboy is an American men's magazine that features photographs of nude women as well as journalism and fiction. It was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with...

magazine in 2004.

Her success came really from her stint at Departures Magazine
Departures Magazine
Departures is an American lifestyle magazine published by American Express Publishing.Magazine subscription is available only to holders of American Express' Platinum and Centurion charge cards, free of charge....

working as an assistant editor. After mentioning her interest in writing classes to her boss, Richard Story, he referred her to his long esteemed friend, Charles Salzberg. She started writing a story about her time at Vogue
Vogue (magazine)
Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine that is published monthly in 18 national and one regional edition by Condé Nast.-History:In 1892 Arthur Turnure founded Vogue as a weekly publication in the United States. When he died in 1909, Condé Montrose Nast picked up the magazine and slowly began...

, trying to complete fifteen pages every couple of weeks. After continuous nudging for her to show her completed writing to agents, she finally did and within two weeks, it was sold.

Weisberger currently resides in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

.

The Devil Wears Prada

In 2003, Weisberger's first book, The Devil Wears Prada, was released and spent six months on the New York Times Best Seller List
New York Times Best Seller list
The New York Times Best Seller list is widely considered the preeminent list of best-selling books in the United States. It is published weekly in The New York Times Book Review magazine, which is published in the Sunday edition of The New York Times and as a stand-alone publication...

. The book is a semi-fictional but highly critical view of the Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

 elite
Elite
Elite refers to an exceptional or privileged group that wields considerable power within its sphere of influence...

's ]. As of July 2006, The Devil Wears Prada was the best-selling mass-market softcover book in the nation, according to Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...

. The book is largely based on Weisberger's experience at Vogue
Vogue (magazine)
Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine that is published monthly in 18 national and one regional edition by Condé Nast.-History:In 1892 Arthur Turnure founded Vogue as a weekly publication in the United States. When he died in 1909, Condé Montrose Nast picked up the magazine and slowly began...

. There is much speculation that the character of Miranda Priestly . The fictional Elias-Clark publishing company is said to be modeled after Condé Nast
Condé Nast Publications
Condé Nast, a division of Advance Publications, is a magazine publisher. In the U.S., it produces 18 consumer magazines, including Architectural Digest, Bon Appétit, GQ, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Vogue, as well as four business-to-business publications, 27 websites, and more than 50 apps...

.
The book calls into light the many aspects of one's first job. It also highlights the presumed insanity of the fashion world and the difficulty and pressure a person goes through when trying to balance a demanding job with an adequate social life. The book provides a comical insight into the fashion world. While this book was met with stunning success, one former employee of Anna Wintour, Kate Betts
Kate Betts
Kate Betts, born March 8, 1964, is an American fashion journalist. Currently she is a contributing editor at Time and The Daily Beast, among other freelance writing positions, and reporting on fashion for CNN. She lives in New York with her family....

, criticized Weisberger and the book in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

, saying that Weisberger and Wintour are the direct counterparts of their fictional characters and that "Andrea ... is just as much a snob as the snobs she is thrown in with." She further hints that the character's portrayal within the book does not suggest that she is in any way above fetching lattes.

Film

A movie of the same name
The Devil Wears Prada (film)
The Devil Wears Prada is a 2006 comedy-drama film, a loose screen adaptation of Lauren Weisberger's 2003 novel of the same name. It stars Anne Hathaway as Andrea Sachs, a recent college graduate who goes to New York City and gets a job as a co-assistant to powerful and demanding fashion magazine...

, based on the novel, was released by 20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...

 in June 2006, starring Meryl Streep
Meryl Streep
Mary Louise "Meryl" Streep is an American actress who has worked in theatre, television and film.Streep made her professional stage debut in 1971's The Playboy of Seville, before her screen debut in the television movie The Deadliest Season in 1977. In that same year, she made her film debut with...

 and Anne Hathaway
Anne Hathaway (actress)
Anne Jacqueline Hathaway is an American actress. After several stage roles, she appeared in the 1999 television series Get Real. She played Mia Thermopolis in The Princess Diaries...

. The film grossed $27.5 million in its opening weekend, amassing total U.S. sales of $125 million and total worldwide sales of $322 million, making it one of the top grossing films of summer 2006. The film departs from the book in several ways. For example, Andrea is a graduate of Northwestern University
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....

 in the film, not Brown. The film shows Miranda requesting Andrea go to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 with her because of Andrea's performance as her assistant over Emily, Miranda's other, more experienced assistant. The book, on the other hand, has Emily catching mono
Infectious mononucleosis
Infectious mononucleosis is an infectious, widespread viral...

, thus not being able to go with Miranda. Further, Lily, Andrea's best friend, is the main reason Andrea leaves Paris in the book. Lily is an alcoholic and gets into a car crash. Andrea has to decide whether to stay with Miranda or go to her friend. The movie does not include any of these details and ends with Andy and Miranda viewing one another with mutual respect. The book affords Andrea no such gratitude as she curses Miranda to her face and is consequently fired.

Television

In October 2006, Fox television
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...

 acquired the television rights to the book, and a television series of the same name had been expected to be developed by Fox in 2007. Weisberger has since appeared on the television talk show
Talk show
A talk show or chat show is a television program or radio program where one person discuss various topics put forth by a talk show host....

s Tout le monde en parle
Tout le monde en parle
Tout le monde en parle is a French talk show broadcast on France 2 from September 5, 1998 to July 8, 2006. It was hosted by Thierry Ardisson and produced by Catherine Barma....

and The Today Show.

Everyone Worth Knowing

Weisberger's second novel, Everyone Worth Knowing
Everyone Worth Knowing
Everyone Worth Knowing is Lauren Weisberger's second novel. Published in 2005, it tells the story of Bette Robinson, a single woman in New York City caught up in the city's party circuit through a new job in public relations....

, was published in fall 2005, and is based upon the trials and tribulations of the New York City public relations
Public relations
Public relations is the actions of a corporation, store, government, individual, etc., in promoting goodwill between itself and the public, the community, employees, customers, etc....

 world. It received generally unfavorable reviews. The New York Times Book Review
The New York Times Book Review
The New York Times Book Review is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to The New York Times in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely read book review publications in the industry. The offices are located near Times Square in New York...

described it as "fatuous, clunky." USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...

called it "lackluster imitation," and Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...

said it was "ho-hum rehash." Despite debuting on The New York Times Best Sellers List at #10, it dropped off the list in two weeks and was noted for its disappointing sales. Publisher Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster, Inc., a division of CBS Corporation, is a publisher founded in New York City in 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. It is one of the four largest English-language publishers, alongside Random House, Penguin and HarperCollins...

 paid Weisberger $1 million for the novel. The audio book was read by actress Eliza Dushku
Eliza Dushku
Eliza Patricia Dushku is an American actress known for her television roles, including recurring appearances as Faith on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spinoff series Angel. She starred in two Fox series, Tru Calling and Dollhouse...

.

In some European countries this novel was released as Gossip and Gucci.

Chasing Harry Winston

Chasing Harry Winston is Weisberger's third novel, which was released on May 27, 2008. It was released in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 on May 19, 2008. The main characters are three best friend New Yorkers, Emmy, Adriana and Leigh, who are facing the horror of turning 30. Recently dumped Emmy promises to make a drastic change and find guys from every continent for casual affairs. Beautiful Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

ian Adriana in turn tries to leave her old lifestyle of sleeping around and living off daddy in order to get a Harry Winston
Harry Winston
Harry Winston was an American jeweler. He donated the Hope Diamond to the Smithsonian Institution in 1958 after owning it for a decade, and traded the Portuguese Diamond to the Smithsonian in 1963.-History:...

 ring on her finger before the first wrinkles start showing. Leigh, the one with the perfect life, does not know what she needs in order to be happy and to be able to relax.

In September 2008, it was announced that Universal Pictures
Universal Pictures
-1920:* White Youth* The Flaming Disc* Am I Dreaming?* The Dragon's Net* The Adorable Savage* Putting It Over* The Line Runners-1921:* The Fire Eater* A Battle of Wits* Dream Girl* The Millionaire...

 had picked up the rights to the book. It was also announced that the movie will be translated into French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

, Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...

 and Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

.

In some European countries this novel was released as Chanel Chic, and in Italy the title is Un anello da Tiffany & Co (A ring from Tiffany & Co).
In France the title is Sexe, diamants et plus si affinités (Sex, Diamonds, and maybe more...)

The book was panned by critics and was voted "#1 Worst Book of 2008" by Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...

.

Last Night at Chateau Marmont

Last Night at Chateau Marmont was released in August 2010. It debuted at #9 on the New York Times Bestseller List on September 5, 2010.

Short Stories

Her short story "The Bamboo Confessions" is included in the anthology American Girls About Town, and is about a New York City backpacker who travels around the world and begins to view her love life back home in a different light.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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