Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and best-selling novelist Anna Quindlen joined Newsweek as a contributing editor in October 1999, succeeding the late Meg Greenfield.  Her column appears every other week on the magazine's back page, alternating with George F. Will.

As a back-page columnist, Quindlen joined a distinguished roster of Newsweek contributors including Ellis Cose, Jane Bryant Quinn, Robert J. Samuelson, Lally Weymouth and Stuart Taylor Jr.

During the past 30 years, Quindlen's work has appeared in some of America's most influential newspapers and most widely-read magazines, and on both fiction and non-fiction best-seller lists. A columnist for The New York Times from 1981 to 1994, in 1990, she became only the third woman in the paper's history to write a regular column for its influential Op-Ed page when she began the nationally-syndicated Public and Private. In 1992, Quindlen was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for commentary.  In 1995, she left the Times and journalism to pursue a career as a novelist full-time.

She has written four best-selling novels: "Object Lessons," published in 1991; "One True Thing" published in 1994 and made into a movie in 1998 starring Meryl Streep and William Hurt; "Black and Blue," a selection of Oprah Winfrey's book club and made into a movie starring Anthony La Paglia and Mary Stuart Masterson, which aired on CBS; and "Blessings," published in September 2002.

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."  Her book "A Short Guide to A Happy Life" has sold more than a million copies. It was followed by "Being Perfect," which also became a national bestseller.

Quindlen is the recipient of many awards.  In 2002, the Association for Women in Communications honored her with a Clarion Award for Best Opinion Column.  In 2001 she was honored with the Mothers At Home Media Award, which is given annually for excellence in covering choices, demands and public policy issues facing today's at-home parents and their families.  That year she also won a Clarion Award for Best Regular Opinion Column in a magazine for a series of columns on topics ranging from motherhood to alcohol to the presidential election.

Quindlen began her journalism career as a reporter with The New York Post in 1974. She joined the Times in 1977 and during her 18 years at the paper held several posts including general-assignment and City Hall reporter (1977-'81), "About New York" columnist (1981-'83), deputy metropolitan editor (1983-'85), and the creator of a weekly column, "Life in the 30's" (1986-'88).

She holds honorary doctorates from Dartmouth College, Denison University, Moravian College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College and Stevens Institute of Technology and was awarded the University Medal of Excellence by Columbia. She was a Poynter Fellow in Journalism at Yale, a Victoria Fellow in Contemporary Issues at Rutgers, and was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Quindlen graduated from Barnard College in New York City, where she serves on the Board of Trustees. She is also on the Council of the Author's Guild and the Board of St. Luke's School in New York. She is married and the mother of three children. She lives with her family in New York.