Daphne Merkin

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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]

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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 [ permanent dead link ]
  10. "About Us". Tablet . Retrieved August 4, 2022.