Margalit Fox (born 1961) is an American writer. She began her career in publishing in the 1980s, before switching to journalism in the 1990s. She joined the obituary department of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' in 2004, and authored over 1,400 obituaries before her retirement from the staff of the paper in 2018. Fox has written several non-fiction books.

Biography

Fox was born in Glen Cove, New York, the daughter of David (a physicist) and Laura Fox. She attended

Barnard College Barnard College of Columbia University is a private women's liberal arts college in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1889 by a group of women led by young student activist Annie Nathan Meyer, who petitioned Columbia ...

in New York City and then Stony Brook University, where she completed her bachelor's degree (1982) and then a

master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice.

in linguistics in 1983. She received a master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1991."About the Author"
TalkingHandsBook.com, accessed June 16, 2013 Fox also studied the cello.Cowen, Tyler
"Margalit Fox on Life, Death, and the Best Job in Journalism"
Medium.com, August 24, 2016 In the 1980s, before attending journalism school, Fox worked in book and magazine publishing. She joined ''

'' in 1994 as a copy editor for its ''

Book Review __NOTOC__ A book review is a form of literary criticism in which a book is merely described (summary review) or analyzed based on content, style, and merit. A book review may be a primary source, opinion piece, summary review or scholarly revie ...

''.Ronan, Alex
"The Art of the Obituary: An Interview with Margalit Fox"
''

The Paris Review ''The Paris Review'' is a quarterly English-language literary magazine established in Paris in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. In its first five years, ''The Paris Review'' published works by Jack Kerouac, Phil ...

'', September 23, 2014, accessed May 24, 2016Fox, Margalit
"She Knows How to Make an Exit. You’re Reading It."
''The New York Times'', June 28, 2018 She has written widely on language, culture and ideas for ''The New York Times'', '' New York Newsday'', ''

Variety Variety may refer to: Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats * Variety (radio) * Variety show, in theater and television Films * ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont * ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...

'' and other publications. Her work was anthologized in ''Best Newspaper Writing, 2005''.Karampelas, Gabrielle
"Margalit Fox and Kiese Laymon win Stanford's 2014 Saroyan Prize for Writing"
''Stanford News'', Stanford University, August 21, 2014 Fox moved to the obituary department of ''The New York Times'' in 2004. There she wrote over 1,400 obituaries before retiring as a senior writer in 2018, penning an article for the paper about her own retirement. She then began to pursue book writing full-time. She left the newspaper with about 80 advance obituaries that continue to give her ''New York Times'' bylines years later.Tate, Leslie
"Margalit Fox: From Shoveling Commas to Changing ''The New York Times'' Obits"
LeslieTate.com, May 2021 Since 2013, Fox has been a member of the usage panel of the ''

American Heritage Dictionary American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, p ...

''. The

Newswomen's Club of New York The Newswomen's Club of New York is a nonprofit organization that focuses on women working in the media in the New York City metropolitan area. Founded in 1922 as the New York Newspaper Woman's Club, it included Eleanor Roosevelt, Helen Rogers Reid ...

awarded Fox its Front Page Award in 2011 for her collection of work at ''The New York Times'' and again in 2015 for "beat reporting". In 2014, she won Stanford University's

William Saroyan International Prize for Writing The William Saroyan International Prize for Writing is a biennial literary award for fiction and nonfiction in the spirit of William Saroyan by emerging writers. It was established by Stanford University Libraries and the William Saroyan Foundation ...

for her book '' The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code''. ''The New York Times'' also ranked the book as one of the "100 Notable Books of 2013." In 2014, ''

'' called Fox "An instrumental figure in pushing the obituary past Victorian-era formal constraints". In its 2015 roundup of "Best journalism of 2015", ''

Sports Illustrated ''Sports Illustrated'' (''SI'') is an American sports magazine first published in August 1954. Founded by Stuart Scheftel, it was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellence twi ...

'' referred to her as "The great ''NYT'' obit writer". In 2016, '' Atlantic Monthly'' described her as "the finest obituarist at ''The New York Times''". Calling her "The Artist of the Obituary", Andrew Ferguson wrote in ''

Commentary Commentary or commentaries may refer to: Publications * ''Commentary'' (magazine), a U.S. public affairs journal, founded in 1945 and formerly published by the American Jewish Committee * Caesar's Commentaries (disambiguation), a number of works ...

'' magazine: "Margalit Fox is one of those writers ... whose every paragraph carries an undercurrent of humor ... you’re never more than a few sentences away from an ironic aside or wry observation or the sudden appearance of some cockeyed fact. ... Stranger still, Fox maintains her writerly bounce despite her regular subject, which is death. ...Fox is ... the best writer all around, at the ''New York Times.'' Her writing is featured in ''

The Sense of Style ''The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century'' is a 2014 English style guide written by cognitive scientist, linguist and popular science author Steven Pinker. Building upon earlier guides, such as Strunk & Wh ...

'' (2014), the writing guide by

Steven Pinker Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind. ...

. Fox has said: "In the course of an obit, you’re charged with taking your subject from the cradle to the grave, which gives you a natural narrative arc. ... 98 percent of the obit has nothing to do with death, but with life. ... We like to say it’s the jolliest department in the paper." Fox is featured in Vanessa Gould's 2016 documentary film ''Obit'' about the ''New York Times'' obituary staff.Dries, Kate
"'Died Is Died Is Died': Talking with Vanessa Gould and Margalit Fox of ''Obit''"
''The Muse: Jezebel'', April 20, 2016 She considers that her journalism work was the perfect training for book writing: "All of the structural devices that a book requires – the formal techniques that give a story its shape; keep it moving along nicely; and introduce the reader, bit by comfortable bit, to new concepts – are already fully present in any good newspaper article. It becomes, then, simply a question of magnitude … and endurance." In 2022 her book, ''The Confidence Men: How Two Prisoners of War Engineered the Most Remarkable Escape in History'', was nominated for the Edgar Award in the category of Best Fact Crime. She is adapting the book for

Thunder Road Films Thunder Road Films is a film and television financing and production company founded by Basil Iwanyk. It is based in Santa Monica, California. Management Producer Basil Iwanyk founded the film and television financing and production company ' ...

in her screenwriting debut. Fox is married to writer and critic George Robinson.

Bibliography

Books

* ''Talking Hands: What Sign Language Reveals About the Mind'',

Simon & Schuster Simon & Schuster () is an American publishing company and a subsidiary of Paramount Global. It was founded in New York City on January 2, 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. As of 2016, Simon & Schuster was the third largest pu ...

(2007) * '' The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code'',

Ecco Press Ecco is a New York-based publishing imprint of HarperCollins. It was founded in 1971 by Daniel Halpern as an independent publishing company; Publishers Weekly described it as "one of America's best-known literary houses." In 1999 Ecco was acquire ...

(2013) * ''Conan Doyle for the Defense: The True Story of a Sensational British Murder, a Quest for Justice, and the World's Most Famous Detective Writer'', Random House (2018) * ''The Confidence Men: How Two Prisoners of War Engineered the Most Remarkable Escape in History'', Random House (2021)

Selected obituaries

Virginia Hamilton Adair Virginia Hamilton Adair (February 28, 1913, New York City – September 16, 2004, Claremont, California) was an American poet who became famous later in life with the 1996 publication of ''Ants on the Melon''. Background Mary Virginia Hamilton wa ...

Betty Allen Betty Allen (March 17, 1927 – June 22, 2009) was an American operatic mezzo-soprano who had an active international singing career during the 1950s through the 1970s. In the latter part of her career her voice acquired a contralto-like darkenin ...

* Maya Angelou *

Emmett L. Bennett, Jr. Emmett Leslie Bennett Jr. (July 18, 1918 – December 15, 2011) was an American classicist and philologist whose systematic catalog of its symbols led to the solution of reading Linear B, a 3,300-year-old syllabary used for writing Mycenaean ...

Christine Brooke-Rose Christine Frances Evelyn Brooke-Rose (16 January 1923 – 21 March 2012) was a British writer and literary critic, known principally for her experimental novels.

Joyce Brothers Joyce Diane Brothers (October 20, 1927 – May 13, 2013) was an American psychologist, television personality, advice columnist, and writer. She first became famous in 1955 for winning the top prize on the American game show '' The $64,000 Ques ...

* Robert N. Buck * Diahann Carroll * Robert L. Chapman *

Lili Chookasian Lili Chookasian (August 1, 1921April 9, 2012) was an American contralto of Armenian ethnicity, who appeared with many of the world's major symphony orchestras and opera houses. She began her career in the 1940s as a concert singer but did not ...

* Hugues Cuénod *

Leo Dillon Leo Dillon (March 2, 1933 – May 26, 2012) and Diane Dillon (''née'' Sorber; born March 13, 1933) were American illustrators of children's books and adult paperback book and magazine covers. One obituary of Leo called the work of the husb ...

Patty Duke Anna Marie "Patty" Duke (December 14, 1946 – March 29, 2016) was an American actress and mental health advocate. Over the course of her acting career, she was the recipient of an Academy Award, two Golden Globe Awards, three Primetime Emmy Awa ...

Betty Friedan Betty Friedan ( February 4, 1921 – February 4, 2006) was an American feminist writer and activist. A leading figure in the women's movement in the United States, her 1963 book ''The Feminine Mystique'' is often credited with sparking the se ...

* John Gardner (British writer) * Jim Gary *

Dorothy Gilman Dorothy Edith Gilman (June 25, 1923 – February 2, 2012) was an American writer. She is best known for the Emily Pollifax, Mrs. Pollifax series. Begun in a time when women in mystery meant Agatha Christie's Miss Marple and international espiona ...

* Crawford Hallock Greenewalt, Jr. * Arthur Haggerty *

Seamus Heaney Seamus Justin Heaney (; 13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013) was an Irish poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature.

* Katherine Johnson * Fred Kilgour * Alice Kober *

Eppie Lederer Esther Pauline "Eppie" Lederer (née Friedman; July 4, 1918 – June 22, 2002), better known by the pen name Ann Landers, was an American advice columnist and eventually a nationwide media celebrity. She began writing the "Ask Ann Landers" colu ...

(Ann Landers) *

Kurt Masur Kurt Masur (18 July 1927 – 19 December 2015) was a German conductor. Called "one of the last old-style maestros", he directed many of the principal orchestras of his era. He had a long career as the Kapellmeister of the Leipzig Gewandhaus O ...

Anne McCaffrey Anne Inez McCaffrey (1 April 1926 – 21 November 2011) was an American-Irish writer known for the ''Dragonriders of Pern'' science fiction series. She was the first woman to win a Hugo Award for fiction (Best Novella, ''Weyr Search'', 19 ...

* René A. Morel *

Toni Morrison Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford; February 18, 1931 – August 5, 2019), known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist. Her first novel, ''The Bluest Eye'', was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed '' So ...

Patricia Neway Patricia Neway (September 30, 1919 – January 24, 2012) was an American operatic soprano and musical theatre actress who had an active international career during the mid-1940s through the 1970s. One of the few performers of her day to enjoy equal ...

Pauline Phillips Pauline Esther "Popo" Phillips (born Friedman; July 4, 1918 – January 16, 2013), also known as Abigail Van Buren, was an American advice columnist and radio show host who began the well-known ''Dear Abby'' newspaper column in 1956. It became t ...

(Dear Abby) * Ingrid Pitt * Chaim Potok *

James Randi James Randi (born Randall James Hamilton Zwinge; August 7, 1928 – October 20, 2020) was a Canadian-American stage magician, author and scientific skepticism, scientific skeptic who extensively challenged paranormal and pseudoscientific cla ...

Adrienne Rich Adrienne Cecile Rich ( ; May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012) was an American poet, essayist and feminist. She was called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century", and was credited with bringing "the ...

* Anneliese Rothenberger *

Albert Schatz (scientist) Albert Israel Schatz (2 February 1920 – 17 January 2005) was an American microbiologist and academic who discovered streptomycin, the first antibiotic known to be effective for the treatment of tuberculosis. He graduated from Rutgers Universi ...

* Jane Scott *

Tony Scott (musician) Tony Scott (born Anthony Joseph Sciacca June 17, 1921 – March 28, 2007) was an American jazz clarinetist and arranger with an interest in folk music around the world. For most of his career he was held in high esteem in new-age music circles b ...

* Maurice Sendak * Rudi Stern *

Kirtanananda Swami Kirtanananda Swami (; September 6, 1937 – October 24, 2011), also known as Bhaktipada (), was a Gaudiya Vaishnava guru and the co-founder of New Vrindaban, a Hare Krishna community in Marshall County, West Virginia, where he served as spir ...

* Keith Tantlinger * Dave Tatsuno *

Marie Tharp Marie Tharp (July 30, 1920 – August 23, 2006) was an American geologist and oceanographic cartographer. In the 1950s, she collaborated with geologist Bruce Heezen to produce the first scientific map of the Atlantic Ocean floor. Her cartograp ...

* Blanche Thebom * Dolores Wilson * Frances Yeend

References

External links

*
Selection of Fox's ''New York Times'' obituaries
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fox, Margalit 1961 births 20th-century American non-fiction writers 20th-century American women writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American women writers Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism alumni Living people Obituary writers Stony Brook University alumni The New York Times writers Writers from Glen Cove, New York