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Amanda Cross

Amanda Cross is the pseudonym of Carolyn Gold Heilbrun, born January 13, 1926 in East Orange, New Jersey. She spent her childhood in Manhattan, roller skating and reading, then attending the Birch Wathen School. After graduation, she went to Wellesley, graduating in 1947. While there, she helped to edit the yearbook, and was encouraged to write by two of her professors ? eventually winning an Atlantic Monthly short story contest.

After jobs both in New York publishing and radio, Caroline Heilbrun studied English Literature at Columbia where she received her M.A. in 1951 and her Ph.D. in 1959. She then taught that subject at Columbia from 1960 until 1993.

Caroline Heilbrun is an ardent feminist, and her writing both with fiction and non-fiction bears that out. Her scholarly work is listed in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Ms. Heilbrun created the character Kate Fansler (an English professor like herself) as a mystery-solving female who first appears in 1964, the protagonist of The Last Analysis. This was most likely the first time Carolyn Heilbrun used the name Amanda Cross ? the name by which she would be most known.

Ms. Heilbrun was the first woman to receive tenure in the English Department at Columbia. Although her writing has been only moderately successful, Carolyn Heilbrun is one of the best writers in her field. Over the years she has also been a visiting lecturer, president of the Modern Language Association, editor of Columbia University Press? Gender and Culture Series, and has been the recipient of a number of fellowships and honorary doctorates.

As Amanda Cross, Carolyn Heilbrun won the Nero Wolfe Award in 1981 for Death in a Tenured Position, and has garnered much critical acclaim for her work.

Ms. Heilbrun met her husband, James Heilbrun, while he was still a student at Harvard, and married him just before he left for the Pacific during World War II. They have three children. Carolyn Heilbrun currently lives in New York City.

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