Nancy Milford

Nancy Milford (born March 26, 1938, Dearborn, Michigan) is an American biographer.

Milford is best known for her book Zelda about F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife Zelda Fitzgerald. The book started out as her master's thesis and was published to broad acclaim in 1970. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, spent 29 weeks on The New York Times best-seller list, and has since been translated into 17 languages.

Her most recent book is Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay, which was published in 2001. She is currently working on a biography of Rose Kennedy.

Milford received her B.A. from the University of Michigan, then earned an M.A. (1964) and Ph.D. (1972) at Columbia University.

While considering writing to be her primary career, Milford has also taught at the University of Michigan, Princeton University, Brown University, Vassar College, New York University, Bennington College, Briarcliff College, and Bard College. In 2002, she became a visiting professor at Hunter College of the City University of New York, and has since joined the permanent faculty there as a Distinguished Lecturer.

In February, 2008, Milford was named the executive director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the Graduate Center, CUNY.

Milford lives in New York.

Books

• Zelda, 1970.
• Contributor, Adrienne Rich's Poetry, 1975.
• Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay, 2001.
• Editor and author of the introduction, The Selected Poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay, 2001.

Awards and honors

Milford has been an Annenberg Fellow at Brown University in 1995; a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow in 1995; a Fulbright scholar in Turkey in 1996 and 1999; a Guggenheim Fellow in 1978; a Literary Lion at the New York Public Library in 1984. In 1972, she was awarded an honorary doctorate by Windham College.

Quotes

• Being a biographer "requires not only the tact, patience and thoroughness of a scholar, but the stamina of a horse." (Quoted in the Albany Times-Union, September 30, 2001.)

External links

• Hunter College website
• Library of Congress Bookfest 2002 biography
• Random House website
• New York Times article

Persondata
Name	Milford, Nancy
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	March 26, 1938
Place of birth
Date of death
Place of death