Judith Thurman began contributing to The New Yorker in 1987, and became a staff writer in 2000. She writes about fashion and books, and her subjects have included André Malraux, Elsa Schiaparelli, and Cristóbal Balenciaga. Thurman is the author of Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller, which won the 1983 National Book Award for Non-Fiction, and Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette (1999), winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Biography, and the Salon Book Award for biography. The Dinesen biography served as the basis for Sydney Pollack’s movie “Out of Africa.” A collection of her New Yorker essays, Cleopatra’s Nose, was published in 2007. Thurman lives in New York.

Read essays by Judith Thurman for The New Yorker
Read a review of Judith Thurman's Cleopatra's Nose from The New York Times

BOOKS

Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller
A brilliant literary portrait, Isak Dinesen remains the only comprehensive biography of one of the greatest storytellers of our time. Her magnificent memoir, Out of Africa, established Isak Dinesen as a major twentieth-century author, who was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize.

With exceptional grace, Judith Thurman's classic work explores Dinesen's life. Until the appearance of this book, the life and art of Isak Dinesen have been--as Dinesen herself wrote of two lovers in a tale-- "a pair of locked caskets, each containing the key to the other." Judith Thurman has provided the master key to them both.

"This, like the best biographies, is a book in which the reader can live."--Margaret Drabble, The New York Times Book Review

"Splendid, inestimably valuable . . . I cannot imagine that it will be supplanted. Right now it is the essential book on Isak Dinesen."--Chicago Tribune Book World

"Absorbing biography . . . This is a gothic tale worthy of the author of Seven Gothic Tales."--Victoria Glendinning, The Washington Post Book World

Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette
A scandalously talented stage performer, a practiced seductress of both men and women, and the flamboyant author of some of the greatest works of twentieth-century literature, Colette was our first true superstar. Now, in Judith Thurman's Secrets of the Flesh, Colette at last has a biography worthy of her dazzling reputation.

Having spent her childhood in the shadow of an overpowering mother, Colette escaped at age twenty into a turbulent marriage with the sexy, unscrupulous Willy--a literary charlatan who took credit for her bestselling Claudine novels. Weary of Willy's sexual domination, Colette pursued an extremely public lesbian love affair with a niece of Napoleon's. At forty, she gave birth to a daughter who bored her, at forty-seven she seduced her teenage stepson, and in her seventies she flirted with the Nazi occupiers of Paris, even though her beloved third husband, a Jew, had been arrested by the Gestapo. And all the while, this incomparable woman poured forth a torrent of masterpieces, including Gigi, Sido, Cheri, and Break of Day.

Judith Thurman, author of the National Book Award-winning biography of Isak Dinesen, portrays Colette as a thoroughly modern woman: frank in her desires, fierce in her passions, forever reinventing herself. Rich with delicious gossip and intimate revelations, shimmering with grace and intelligence, Secrets of the Flesh is one of the great biographies of our time.

Cleopatra's Nose: 39 Varieties of Desire
A New York Times Notable Book of 2007, Cleopatra's Nose is an exuberant gathering of essays and profiles, representing twenty years of Judith Thurman's writing, particularly her fascination with human vanity, femininity, and "women's work"--a term that, in her definition, encompasses haute couture, literature, and ruling empires. The subjects are varied--Cleopatra, Jackie Kennedy, Anne Frank; tofu, performance art, pornography--but as a whole these essays hint at the central preoccupations of a uniquely inquisitive mind.

"Blessed with intellectual curiosity, a sharp wit and unwillingness to receive opinions, Thurman seems unlikely to produce anything less than a feat of style. . . . An excellent book."--The New York Times Book Review

"Elegant yet casual, knowledgeable without being intimidating, self-revealing but never self-indulgent . . . Open the cover and drop in anywhere. You'll find Thurman's crisp intelligence always at home."--The Boston Globe

"Thurman's essays are so deeply felt and arc so elegantly from the uniqueness of each individual to the greater conundrums of humankind, they are, indeed, exquisite works of art deserving a book's more lasting embrace."--Booklist

"When paired with her ability as a biographre to peel layers and put a life into context, Thurman's grasp of global politics, history, and language can be astounding. . . . But what fun we have when the self-professed shoe addict writes about clothes and the people who worship them."--Austin American Statesman

Judith Thurman speaks at Google