Judith Newman | |
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Born | 1961 |
Occupation | Journalist, author |
Language | English |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | |
Notable works |
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Judith B. Newman (born 1961) [1] [2] is an American journalist and author. She writes about entertainment, relationships, parenthood, business, beauty, books, science, and popular culture. Her work has appeared in more than fifty periodicals, including The New York Times , Vanity Fair, Harper's , The Wall Street Journal , Allure (where she served as Contributing Editor) and Vogue . [3] Newman's books include the memoirs You Make Me Feel Like an Unnatural Woman: The Diary of a New (Older) Mother [4] [5] and To Siri With Love. [6]
Newman was raised in Scarsdale, New York. [7] Her father, Edmund Newman, was a district sales manager for the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company, [8] and her mother, Frances (née Fiorillo; 1926–2011), was a physician. [9] The actor Barry Newman (1930–2023), who played the title role on the 1970s television series Petrocelli , was Judith's uncle. [10]
Newman graduated from Scarsdale High School [11] in 1977 [12] and received a bachelor's degree from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, in 1981. [13] She received a Master of Arts degree in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University in 1984. [14]
Since the 1980s, Newman has written for magazines, newspapers and periodicals. Her articles include: "At Your Disposal – The Funeral Industry Prepares for Boom Times" ( Harper's , 1997), [15] "I Have Seen Cancers Disappear" ( Discover, 2001), [16] "Chasing Britney" ( Allure, 2007), [17] "How the Kardashians Made $65 Million Last Year" ( The Hollywood Reporter , 2011) [18] and "Making Waves with No Apology" ( The New York Times, 2011). [19]
Newman has been described as "one of the most successful freelance journalists today". [20] Her article "I Have Seen Cancers Disappear" was selected for inclusion in The Best American Science and Nature Writing . [3] [21] On the other hand, Newman's writing has found critics: a review in Jezebel of her article "Chasing Britney" commented that she squandered "an opportunity to question the common wisdom that it is Britney [Spears] who is insane, not those around her." [22]
Newman has written a regular column for Ladies Home Journal ("My Life as a Mom") and has written sex columns for Mademoiselle and American Health. She wrote a relationship column for the defunct teen girls' magazine YM , and an etiquette column ("Manner Up") for Parade . Newman contributes book reviews to People [23] and The New York Times Book Review. [24] Times Book Review editor Pamela Paul said, "Judith Newman could review a potato peel and it would be wry, insightful, and entertaining." [25]
Newman's approach to narrative and criticism has occasionally irritated some of the prominent people about whom she writes. In response to a Vanity Fair story about the downfall of Rosie O'Donnell's Rosie magazine, O'Donnell, from the witness stand during a trial, stated that Newman was like "the nebbishy Jewish girl who worked for the audiovisual club in high school." [26] Publisher Judith Regan criticized Newman following the publication of Newman's 2005 story, "The Devil and Miss Regan," in Vanity Fair. [27] The Daily Telegraph wrote that "Regan would happily knock the teeth out of Judith Newman." [28]
In January 2014, Newman's essay "Wikipedia, What Does Judith Newman Have to Do to Get a Page?" appeared in The New York Times . In the essay, Newman questioned Wikipedia's editorial policies, including its criteria for selecting and deleting articles, and requested that Wikipedia editors help with creating an article about her. [29] That same day, a Wikipedia article was written on Newman, who chronicled her "Wiki-Validation" in a second New York Times column a week later: "Wikipedia may be a haven for cranks and pedants, but it is also amazing," Newman wrote. "Why some guy named SSSilvers [ sic ], who describes his interests as 'light opera, musical theater and global warming,' would take hours out of his day to noodle with a stranger's page is mysterious, and yet touching." [30] [31]
In 1993, Newman wrote Bath (Chic Simple), and the following year she wrote Body (Chic Simple), both for the Chic Simple Components series. [32] [33] In 1994, she also authored Tell Me Another One: A Woman's Guide to Men's Classic Lines, which focuses on male pick-up lines. [34] The idea for the book came to Newman after she was jilted. [35] The next year, Newman wrote Parents from Hell: Unexpurgated Tales of Good Intentions Gone Awry. [36]
In 1996, Newman co-wrote Just Between Us Girls: Secrets About Men from the Madam Who Knows with "Mayflower Madam" Sydney Biddle Barrows. [37] In 2013, she collaborated with Samantha Geimer on The Girl: A Life in the Shadow of Roman Polanski. [38] A reviewer in The Guardian wrote, "[The Girl] might be the most important and invaluable book of the century so far ... an emotional rollercoaster ... smart and articulate". [39]
Newman's memoir, You Make Me Feel Like An Unnatural Woman: Diary of a New (Older) Mother, was published in 2004. [5] It details the challenges of getting pregnant at the age of 40, after "seven years of science," $70,000, and nine months of nausea. A Publishers Weekly review noted: "While humorless and/or politically correct readers may bristle at Newman's antics, everyone else will be rolling in the aisles, reading out funny parts to perfect strangers." [4]
In 2017, HarperCollins released Newman's To Siri with Love, a collection of stories about life with her autistic son, Gus. The book was inspired by her 2014 New York Times essay of the same name. [40] [41] To Siri With Love was a New York Times notable book of 2017 and was positively reviewed by the Washington Post , in which it is called "Newman's love letter to her son". [6] [42] Newman's statement in the book that she intended to gain medical power of attorney over her son to involuntarily sterilize him, and other disclosures that members of the autism community felt were an invasion of her son's privacy, led to them calling for a boycott of the book. [43] [44]
Newman lives in New York City. She has twin sons [45] born in 2001. [46] Newman and her husband, opera singer John Snowdon, [47] maintained separate apartments in Manhattan for the duration of their 25-year marriage. He died in June 2018. [48]
Britney Jean Spears is an American singer. Often referred to as the "Princess of Pop", she is credited with influencing the revival of teen pop during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Spears has sold over 100 million records worldwide, including over 70 million in the United States, making her one of the world's best-selling music artists. She has earned numerous awards and accolades, including a Grammy Award, 15 Guinness World Records, six MTV Video Music Awards, seven Billboard Music Awards, the inaugural Radio Disney Icon Award, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Her heavily choreographed videos earned her the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award.
Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist, and feminist activist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, nor was she considered one at the time of her death, she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory.
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Lauren Bacall was an American actress. She was named the 20th-greatest female star of classic Hollywood cinema by the American Film Institute and received an Academy Honorary Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2009 in recognition of her contribution to the Golden Age of motion pictures. She was known for her alluring, sultry presence and her distinctive, husky voice. Bacall was one of the last surviving major stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema.
Siri Hustvedt is an American novelist and essayist. Hustvedt is the author of a book of poetry, seven novels, two books of essays, and several works of non-fiction. Her books include The Blindfold (1992), The Enchantment of Lily Dahl (1996), What I Loved (2003), for which she is best known, A Plea for Eros (2006), The Sorrows of an American (2008), The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves (2010), The Summer Without Men (2011), Living, Thinking, Looking (2012), The Blazing World (2014), and Memories of the Future (2019). What I Loved and The Summer Without Men were international bestsellers. Her work has been translated into over thirty languages.
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Judith Regan is an American editor, producer, book publisher, and television and radio talk show host. She is the head of Regan Arts.
ReganBooks was an American bestselling imprint or division of HarperCollins book publishing house, headed by editor and publisher Judith Regan, started in 1994 and ended in late 2006. During its existence, Regan was called, by LA Weekly, "the world's most successful publisher". The division reportedly earned $120 million a year. ReganBooks focused on celebrity authors and controversial topics, sometimes from recent tabloids.
"Eve's Diary" is a comic short story by Mark Twain. It was first published in the 1905 Christmas issue of the magazine Harper's Bazaar, in book format as one contribution to a volume entitled "Their Husband's Wives" and then in June 1906 as a standalone book by Harper and Brothers publishing house.
Bridget Catherine Regan is an American actress best known for her lead roles as Kahlan Amnell on the ABC adventure romance series Legend of the Seeker (2008–10) and Sasha Cooper on the last three seasons of the TNT action drama series The Last Ship (2016–18), as well as her recurring roles as Rebecca Lowe / Rachel Turner on the USA Network police procedural drama series White Collar (2013–14), Rose Solano on The CW romantic comedy drama series Jane the Virgin (2014–19), and Dottie Underwood on the ABC action adventure superhero series Agent Carter (2015–16). Regan also appeared in films such as The Babysitters (2007), John Wick (2014), and Devil's Gate (2017).
Judith Jones was an American writer and editor, best known for having rescued The Diary of Anne Frank from the reject pile. Jones also championed Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. She retired as senior editor and vice president at Alfred A. Knopf in 2011. Jones was also a cookbook author and memoirist. She won multiple lifetime achievement awards, including the James Beard Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006.
Judith Hearne, was regarded by Northern Irish-Canadian writer Brian Moore as his first novel. The book was published in 1955 after Moore had left Ireland and was living in Canada. It was rejected by 10 American publishers, then was accepted by a British publisher. Diana Athill's memoir Stet (2000) has information about the publishing of Judith Hearne.
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No Lifeguard on Duty: The Accidental Life of the World's First Supermodel is an autobiography by fashion model, photographer, author and talent agent Janice Dickinson. It was published in hardcover format in 2002 by ReganBooks, an imprint of HarperCollins. The author's friend make-up artist Way Bandy advised her to begin putting her past experiences down on paper as a form of therapy from prior trauma in her life. After gaining sobriety, she started compiling her notes into book format. She contacted book publisher Judith Regan who agreed to help her publish her book after hearing her tale on the phone, without first seeing a writing sample. In November 2014, Dickinson asserted in an interview with Entertainment Tonight that pressure from Bill Cosby and his lawyers resulted in the removal of an account of sexual assault and rape by Cosby when she visited him at a hotel in Lake Tahoe, California in 1982. After Cosby's attorney disputed this account, she reappeared on the program to proclaim she was telling the truth and explained she was speaking out publicly because of a need to be heard and to represent other women who stated they experienced a similar trauma.
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Aphrodesia's Diary is a 1983 American adult erotic film directed by Radley Metzger and Gérard Kikoïne.