Vicki Baum (1888–1960)

Vicki Baum was born into a Jewish Viennese family and began writing in her teens. However, her earliest career was as a musician playing the harp. She later worked as a magazine journalist. During World War I, she served for a short time as a nurse. Vicki Baum published her first book at age 31. She's most famous today for her 1929 novel that was made into the Academy Award-winning film Grand Hotel, but she wrote many other bestsellers. She emigrated to the USA with her family, worked as a Hollywood screenwriter, gained US citizenship in 1938, and wrote her later works in English rather than German. Her memoir, It Was All Quite Different, was published posthumously in 1964.