NY Times Best-Selling Author, Anna Quindlen, to Visit Bucks County

My Mom, very much a working woman her whole life, passed away in Sept 2021. As I was carefully going through her things, I found an issue of Working Woman magazine from 1995 featuring a piece by Anna Quindlen, the NY Times best-selling author, titled “Why I Quit”. Her name was highlighted on the cover of the magazine with a headline that screamed, “Get a Life: How to Create a Saner, Simpler Life.”

This was the only magazine my mother saved and it made complete sense to me. Like Ms. Quindlen, my Mom was a pioneer for working women but also for balance and motherhood.

Best-Selling Author, Anna Quindlen Sets Example to Pursue Dreams

Ms. Quindlen’s article highlighted her very public choice to resign her position as the only female columnist on the NY Times Op-Ed page to pursue a career as a full-time novelist. To many in 1995, “full-time novelist” was a synonym for “quitting her career to be a SAHM” or worse “retirement.” Never mind that she had worked at home around her children’s schedules as an Op-Ed columnist to that point for years. In the article, Ms Quindlen recounts some of the public complaints hurled at her, post-decision. Some wrote that her resignation was a sign that women could not “have it all.” Others felt that she was letting women down. Still others were more vehement in their criticism and exclaimed “HOW CAN YOU DO THIS TO US?”

At the end of the article, Quindlen wrote “….the time we are afforded to find happiness and satisfaction can not be spared or wasted, and that, whenever possible, dreams must be pursued, not deferred.” Ms. Quindlen went on to write over twenty books. “Not deferred,” indeed!

Anna Quindlen Comes To Bucks County to Celebrate Her Latest Release, “Write For Your Life”

Lucky for those of us in the Bucks County area, Anna Quindlen, hosted by the Doylestown & Lahaska Book Shop, will appear at Delaware Valley University on April 14^th at 7:00 pm for “An Evening with Anna Quindlen.” She will introduce her new book, Write For Your Life, and sit down for an interview with Elle Green, Director of the Bucks County BookFest. Details for the event can be found at the Doylestown & Lahaska Book Shop website. Tickets, which include a copy of the book, can be purchased in advance. It will be held at the Life Sciences Building at Delaware Valley University in Doylestown, PA.

Bucks County’s Elle Green to Interview Anna Quindlen at Delaware Valley University

Elle Green shared that this will be her third interview with Ms Quindlen and she is excited to ask her about the book. “The message in Write for Your Life provides encouragement for anyone to pick up a pen and get started,” she enthused. Elle, who runs the Bucks County BookFest in Doylestown for writers and book lovers that is held in the Fall, believes that stories are the way we are truly inspired. “I am a big fan of Ms Quindlen’s books,” she said, “she told the stories of my life in her writing.”