For Immediate Release: April 16, 1999
Please call: Sarah Grolnic-McClurg 413-538-2030 [email protected]
Anna Quindlen to Speak at Mount Holyoke College Commencement
South Hadley, Massachusetts--On Sunday, May 23, Anna Quindlen, novelist, social critic, and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, will deliver Mount Holyoke College's 162nd commencement address and receive an honorary doctor of humane letters degree. 460 seniors will graduate from the private liberals arts college in South Hadley, Mass.
Commencement ceremonies will take place on Sunday, May 23 at 10:30 am at the Gettell Amphitheater on the Mount Holyoke campus.
Quindlen has enjoyed equally successful careers as a journalist and writer of fiction. Her work over the past 25 years has appeared in some of America's most influential newspapers, many well-known magazines, and on both the fiction and non-fiction bestseller lists. Quindlen had a meteoric rise as a newspaper journalist, holding five successive positions at The New York Times. She was the third woman in the paper's history to write a regular column for its Op-Ed page. A collection of her biweekly "Public & Private" columns was published in 1993. In 1992, her work as a columnist earned her the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. When Quindlen left the Op-Ed page in 1994, she already had two best-sellers to her credit: Object Lessons (1991) and One True Thing (1994). In 1998, Sibling and Black and Blue: A Novel were published.
"Mount Holyoke College is honored that Anna Quindlen will speak at the college," said Mount Holyoke President Joanne V. Creighton. "Her excellent and inspiring writing, both as a columnist and novelist, makes her a role model to future writers. And, as a graduate of our sister college, Barnard, she also inspires all graduates of women's colleges."
Quindlen will receive an honorary degree along with four other individuals. The other honorary degree recipients will also speak briefly, each delivering a short charge to the class of 1999.
Accomplished in fields from higher education to health law, the additional honorary degree recipients will be: Ama Ata Aidoo, a Ghanaian feminist writer; Frances H. Miller '60, a scholar, lawyer, author, and expert in health law; Roy Neuberger, collector, patron of the arts, and financier; and, Nancy J. Vickers '67, a teacher, scholar, and president of Bryn Mawr College.
Founded in 1837, Mount Holyoke College is the oldest institution of higher education for women in the nation.
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