Susan Quinn

Notable work and positions

Author of Marie Curie: A Life, Eleanor and Hick, A Mind of Her Own, and Furious Improvisation
Contributor - The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, Boston Globe Magazine
Chair, PEN New England

Biography

Susan Taft Quinn is an American writer and biographer based in Brookline, Massachusetts. She grew up in Chillicothe, Ohio, and graduated from Oberlin College, where she worked on the student newspaper. She began her career as a newspaper reporter, first in Cleveland, before moving to Boston, where she became a contributor to The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine and the Boston Globe Magazine. Since the late 1980s, Quinn has written a series of biographies researched with support from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, including a widely translated life of Marie Curie and Eleanor and Hick, an account of Eleanor Roosevelt's relationship with Associated Press reporter Lorena Hickok. She has served as chair of PEN New England, a branch of the writers' organization PEN International, and continues to perform as a flutist in Boston-area chamber groups. She is currently at work on a biography of Betty Friedan, due from Oxford University Press.

Career highlights

• A Mind of Her Own: The Life of Karen Horney Simon and Schuster / Addison-Wesley / Perseus, 1987 · Biography of the psychoanalyst Karen Horney.
• Marie Curie: A Life Simon & Schuster, 1995 · Biography of the physicist and chemist, translated into eight languages and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award.
• Furious Improvisation: How the WPA and a Cast of Thousands Made High Art Out of Desperate Times Walker & Company, 2008 · History of the Depression-era Federal Theatre Project, centered on its director, Hallie Flanagan.
• Eleanor and Hick: The Love Affair That Shaped a First Lady Penguin Press, 2016 · Account of the relationship between Eleanor Roosevelt and Associated Press reporter Lorena Hickok.