Stacy Schiff - Biography

Biography

Schiff, born in Adams, Massachusetts, is a graduate of Phillips Andover Academy 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, among other places, The New Yorker, The New York Times and The Times Literary Supplement. She is a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review, which noted that she has been "regularly praised for both her meticulous scholarship and her witty style." (October 24, 2008)

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

Schiff's A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America (2005) won a number of awards and was published in England under the title Dr. Franklin Goes to France.

Schiff's most recent biography, Cleopatra: A Life, was published by Little, Brown and Company in November 2010, reached number 3 on the The New York Times Best Seller list and garnered extraordinary reviews. The Wall Street Journal's critic wrote, "Stacy Schiff does a rare thing; she gives us a book we'd miss if it didn't exist." Rick Riordan declared Cleopatra "impossible to put down;" The New Yorker termed it "a work of literature;" Michael Korda called it "a masterpiece;" Tina Brown declared it read "almost like a novel in its juicy literary flair;" Maureen Dowd found it "captivating;" Simon Winchester predicted the book would become a classic.

Currently a guest columnist at The New York Times, Schiff resides in New York City and Edmonton, Alberta.