Nancy Milford is an American biographer.
Milford is best known for her book
Zelda about
F. Scott FitzgeraldFrancis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost...
's wife
Zelda FitzgeraldZelda Sayre Fitzgerald , born Zelda Sayre in Montgomery, Alabama, was an American novelist and the wife of writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. She was an icon of the 1920s—dubbed by her husband "the first American Flapper"...
. The book started out as her master's thesis and was published to broad acclaim in 1970. It was a finalist for the
Pulitzer PrizeThe Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
and the
National Book AwardThe National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...
, spent 29 weeks on
The New York TimesThe 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...
best-seller list, and has since been translated into 17 languages.
Her most recent book is
Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay, which was published in 2001. She is currently working on a biography of Rose Kennedy.
Milford received her B.A. from the
University of MichiganThe University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
, then earned an M.A. (1964) and Ph.D. (1972) at
Columbia UniversityColumbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
.
While considering writing to be her primary career, Milford has also taught at the
University of MichiganThe University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
,
Princeton UniversityPrinceton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
,
Brown UniversityBrown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
,
Vassar CollegeVassar College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college in the town of Poughkeepsie, New York, in the United States. The Vassar campus comprises over and more than 100 buildings, including four National Historic Landmarks, ranging in style from Collegiate Gothic to International,...
,
New York UniversityNew York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
,
Bennington CollegeBennington College is a liberal arts college located in Bennington, Vermont, USA. The college was founded in 1932 as a women's college and became co-educational in 1969.-History:-Early years:...
,
Briarcliff CollegeBriarcliff College was a women's college located in the village of Briarcliff Manor in Westchester County, New York, near White Plains.Founded in the 1904, Briarcliff was a junior college until 1965, during the presidency of Charles E. Atkins, when it began awarding four-year Bachelor's degrees...
, and
Bard CollegeBard College, founded in 1860 as "St. Stephen's College", is a small four-year liberal arts college located in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.-Location:...
. In 2002, she became a visiting professor at
Hunter CollegeHunter College, established in 1870, is a public university and one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York, located on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Hunter grants undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate degrees in more than one hundred fields of study, and is recognized...
of the
City University of New YorkThe City University of New York is the public university system of New York City, with its administrative offices in Yorkville in Manhattan. It is the largest urban university in the United States, consisting of 23 institutions: 11 senior colleges, six community colleges, the William E...
, and has since joined the permanent faculty there as a Distinguished Lecturer.
In February, 2008, Milford was named the executive director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the Graduate Center, CUNY.
Milford lives in New York.
Books
- Zelda, 1970.
- Contributor, Adrienne Rich's Poetry, 1975.
- Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay, 2001.
- Editor and author of the introduction, The Selected Poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay, 2001.
Awards and honors
Milford has been an Annenberg Fellow at Brown University in 1995; a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow in 1995; a Fulbright scholar in Turkey in 1996 and 1999; a Guggenheim Fellow in 1978; a Literary Lion at the New York Public Library in 1984. In 1972, she was awarded an honorary doctorate by Windham College.
Quotes
- Being a biographer "requires not only the tact, patience and thoroughness of a scholar, but the stamina of a horse." (Quoted in the Albany Times-Union, September 30, 2001.)
External links