Newswise — Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and novelist Anna Quindlen will deliver the Commencement address at Hamilton College on Sunday, May 21, at 10:30 a.m., in the Margaret Bundy Scott Field House.
Quindlen writes Newsweek's column "The Last Word." During the past 30 years, her work has appeared in America's most influential newspapers and magazines and on fiction and nonfiction bestseller lists.
In addition, she has written four bestselling novels: Object Lessons, One True Thing, Blessings and Black and Blue, which was a selection of the Oprah Winfrey Book Club. Quindlen has also published three collections of her columns: Living Out Loud, Thinking Out Loud and Loud and Clear, as well as How Reading Changed My Life and Imagined London. In Loud & Clear, a collection of her Newsweek and New York Times columns, she combines commentary on American society and the world-at-large with reflections on being a woman, writer and mother. Her national bestseller, A Short Guide to a Happy Life, has sold more than one million copies. It was followed by Being Perfect, which also became a national bestseller.
While a columnist for The New York Times (1981-1994), Quindlen became only the third woman in the newspaper's history to write a regular column for its Op-Ed page when she began the nationally-syndicated "Public and Private." In 1992 Quindlen was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for commentary. Three years later she left The Times and journalism to pursue a career as a full-time novelist.
Quindlen is a native of Philadelphia and a graduate of Barnard College, where she is chair of the board of trustees. She holds honorary degrees from more than a dozen American colleges and universities, was awarded the University Medal of Excellence by Columbia University, was a Poynter Fellow in Journalism at Yale and was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1996.Approximately 510 Hamilton students will receive bachelor's degrees during the commencement ceremony that marks the end of the college's 194th academic year. Previous Hamilton Commencement speakers have included former Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke (2005); Delaware Congressman Mike Castle, a 1961 Hamilton graduate (2004); PBS news anchor Jim Lehrer (2003); former EPA Administrator and New Jersey Governor Christie Whitman (2002); and Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack, a 1972 Hamilton graduate (2001).
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