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 ...

'' 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 Glen Cove is a city in Nassau County, New York, United States, on the North Shore of Long Island. At the 2020 United States Census, the city population was 28,365 as of the 2020 census. The city was considered part of the early 20th century G ...

, 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 Col ...

in New York City and then

Stony Brook University Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public research university in Stony Brook, New York. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is one of the State University of New York syste ...

, 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 The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism is located in Pulitzer Hall on the university's Morningside Heights campus in New York City. Founded in 1912 by Joseph Pulitzer, Columbia Journalism School is one of the oldest journalism s ...

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 revi ...

''.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, Phi ...

'', 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 ''New York Newsday'' was an American daily newspaper that primarily served New York City and was sold throughout the New York metropolitan area. The paper, established in 1985, was a New York City-specific offshoot of '' Newsday'', a Long Island ...

'', ''

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, ...

''. 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 The Front Page Award is an award given by the Newswomen's Club of New York to honor journalistic achievement by women.October 11th 2014, The EconomistWard Award Retrieved August 3, 2015, "...Rosemarie Ward ... has won a Front Page Award from the Ne ...

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 twice ...

'' referred to her as "The great ''NYT'' obit writer". In 2016, ''

Atlantic Monthly ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...

'' described her as "the finest obituarist at ''The New York Times''". Calling her "The Artist of the Obituary",

Andrew Ferguson Andrew Ferguson (born June 28, 1956) is an American journalist and author. Career Ferguson is currently a staff writer at '' The Atlantic''. Previously, he was senior editor of '' The Weekly Standard'' (defunct since December 2018), and a colum ...

wrote in '' Commentary'' 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'' (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. P ...

. 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 pub ...

(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 acquired ...

(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 was ...

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 darkeni ...

Maya Angelou Maya Angelou ( ; born Marguerite Annie Johnson; April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014) was an American memoirist, popular poet, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and ...

* Emmett L. Bennett, Jr. *

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 Quest ...

Robert N. Buck Robert Nietzel Buck (January 29, 1914 – April 14, 2007) broke the junior transcontinental air speed record in 1930 and for a time was the youngest licensed pilot in the United States. Early life He was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, on Janu ...

Diahann Carroll Diahann Carroll (; born Carol Diann Johnson; July 17, 1935 – October 4, 2019) was an American actress, singer, model, and activist. She rose to prominence in some of the earliest major studio films to feature black casts, including '' C ...

* Robert L. Chapman * Lili Chookasian *

Hugues Cuénod Hugues-Adhémar Cuénod (; 26 June 19026 December 2010)

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 hu ...

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) John Edmund Gardner (20 November 1926 – 3 August 2007) was an English spy and thriller novelist, best known for his James Bond continuation novels, but also for his series of Boysie Oakes books and three continuation novels containing S ...

Jim Gary Jim Gary (March 17, 1939 – January 14, 2006) was an American sculptor popularly known for his large, colorful creations of dinosaurs made from discarded automobile parts. These sculptures were typically finished with automobile paint altho ...

* Dorothy Gilman * 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 Katherine Johnson (née Coleman; August 26, 1918 – February 24, 2020) was an American mathematician whose calculations of orbital mechanics as a NASA employee were critical to the success of the first and subsequent U.S. crewed spaceflights. ...

Fred Kilgour Frederick Gridley Kilgour (January 6, 1914 – July 31, 2006) was an American librarian and educator known as the founding director of OCLC (Online Computer Library Center), an international computer library network and database. He was its presi ...

Alice Kober Alice Elizabeth Kober (December 23, 1906 – May 16, 1950) was an American classicist best known for her work on the decipherment of Linear B. Educated at Hunter College and Columbia University, Kober taught classics at Brooklyn College fro ...

* Eppie Lederer (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 Orch ...

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'', 1 ...

* 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 '' S ...

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 equ ...

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 Ingrid Pitt (born Ingoushka Petrov; 21 November 193723 November 2010) was a Polish-British actress and writer best known for her work in horror films of the 1970s. Early life Ingoushka Petrov was born in Warsaw, Poland, one of two daughter ...

* 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 skeptic who extensively challenged paranormal and pseudoscientific claims. Rodrigues 2010p. ...

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 Anneliese Rothenberger (19 June 191924 May 2010) was a German operatic soprano who had an active international performance career which spanned from 1942 to 1983. She specialized in the lyric coloratura soprano repertoire, and was particularly ad ...

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 Universit ...

* 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 Maurice Bernard Sendak (; June 10, 1928 – May 8, 2012) was an American author and illustrator of children's books. He became most widely known for his book ''Where the Wild Things Are'', first published in 1963.Turan, Kenneth (October 16, 200 ...

* Rudi Stern * Kirtanananda Swami * Keith Tantlinger *

Dave Tatsuno Dave Tatsuno (born Masaharu Tatsuno August 18, 1913 – January 26, 2006, in California) was a Japanese American are Americans of Japanese ancestry. Japanese Americans were among the three largest Asian American ethnic communities during ...

* Marie Tharp * 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