Daphne Merkin

Daphne Miriam Merkin (born May 30, 1954)[1] is an American literary critic, essayist and novelist. Merkin is a graduate of Barnard College and also attended Columbia University's graduate program in English literature.[2]

She began her career as a book critic for the magazines Commentary,[2] The New Republic, and The New Leader, where she wrote a book column and later, a movie column.[2] In 1986, she became an editor with the publishing house of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. In 1997, after Tina Brown became editor of The New Yorker, Merkin became a film critic for the magazine. She also wrote extensively on books and became known for her frank forays into autobiography; her personal essays dealt with subjects ranging from her battle with depression, to her predilection for spanking,[3] to the unacknowledged complexities of growing up rich on Park Avenue. In 2005, she joined The New York Times Magazine as a contributing writer. She is the author of a novel, Enchantment (1984)[2] as well as two collections of essays, Dreaming of Hitler (1997)[4] and The Fame Lunches (2014),[5] and a memoir, This Close to Happy: A Reckoning With Depression (2017).[6] Her latest novel, 22 Minutes of Unconditional Love (2020),[7] came out in July 2020.

Her parents were the philanthropists Hermann and Ursula Merkin. Her brother is J. Ezra Merkin, a hedge fund manager and philanthropist who was embroiled in the Bernie Madoff scandal.[8]

Merkin teaches writing at the 92nd Street Y.[9] She married and divorced Michael Brod, and lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan with her daughter, Zoe. She also is a contributing editor to Tablet magazine.[10]

References

  1. Brent, Frances (December 16, 2014). "Miss Bossypants Meets Virginia Woolf in ‘The Fame Lunches’". Tablet.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Joel Shatzky, Michael Taub (1997). Contemporary Jewish-American novelists: a bio-critical sourcebook. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 216–222. ISBN 9780313294624. Retrieved July 19, 2010.
  3. Merkin, Daphne (February 26, 1996). "Unlikely Obsession". The New Yorker. p. 98. Retrieved July 19, 2010.
  4. Kurth, Peter (June 10, 1997). "Sneak Peeks". Salon. Archived from the original on June 29, 2011. Retrieved July 19, 2021.
  5. "The Fame Lunches | Kirkus Reviews" Kirkus. June 12, 2014. Retrieved July 18, 2021.
  6. Solomon, Andrew (January 30, 2017). "Diving Into Hell: A Powerful Memoir of Depression". The New York Times. Retrieved March 19, 2017.
  7. "22 Minutes of Unconditional Love | Daphne Merkin". us.macmillan.com. Retrieved April 11, 2021.
  8. Hoyt, Clark (April 11, 2009). "Behind a Byline, Family Ties". The New York Times. Retrieved April 11, 2021.
  9. "A Voice of One's Own ," 92y.org
  10. "About Us". Tablet. Retrieved August 4, 2022.


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.