Rabbi on Forty-Seventh Street: The Story of Her Father

Ann Judith Birstein was born in New York City on May 27, 1927. She graduated from Queens College in 1948 and spent a year in France as a Fulbright scholar. While a senior at Queens College, she wrote a novel about a rabbi's secretary. The manuscript won a fellowship sponsored by the publisher Dodd, Mead and Company for $1,200. Star of Glass was show more published in 1950. Her other novels included The Troublemaker, Dickie's List, and Summer Situations. She married literary critic Alfred Kazin in 1952 and they divorced in 1982. She also wrote several memoirs including The Rabbi on Forty-Seventh Street and What I Saw at the Fair. She taught creative writing at Barnard College, Queens College, and City College in New York and lectured at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. She died of lung cancer on May 24, 2017 at the age of 89. (Bowker Author Biography) show less