BIOGRAPHY OF ERICA JONG

Erica Jong is a novelist, poet, and essayist. She has consistently used her craft to help provide women with a powerful and rational voice in forging a feminist consciousness. Erica Jong lives in New York City and Weston, CT with her husband, attorney Ken Burrows, and standard poodle, Belinda Barkowitz.  Her daughter, Molly Jong-Fast, is also a writer. She has published 20 books, including eight novels, six volumes of poetry, six books of non-fiction and numerous articles in magazines and newspapers such as the New York Times, the Sunday Times of London, Elle, Vogue and  the New York Times Book Review. Erica Jong was honored with the United Nations Award for Excellence in Literature. She has also received Poetry magazine's Bess Hokin Prize, also won by W.S. Merwin and Sylvia Plath. In France, she received the Deauville Award for Literary Excellence and in Italy, she received the Sigmund Freud Award for Literature. The City University of New York awarded Ms. Jong an honorary PhD at the College of Staten Island. Calling herself “a defrocked academic,” Ms. Jong has partly returned to her roots as a scholar.  She has taught at Ben Gurion University in Israel, Bennington College in the US, Breadloaf Writers’ Conference in Vermont and many other distinguished writing programs and universities. She loves to teach and lecture, though her skill in these areas has sometimes crowded her writing projects.  “As long as I am communicating the gift of literature, I’m happy,” Jong says.  A poet at heart, Ms. Jong believes that words can save the world.