Margalit Fox

Margalit Fox (born April 25, 1961) is an American writer. After earning a master's degree in linguistics, she began her career in publishing in the 1980s. In 1994, she joined The New York Times as a copy editor for its Book Review and later wrote widely on language, culture and ideas for The New York Times, New York Newsday, Variety and other publications. She joined the obituary department of The New York Times in 2004 and authored more than 1,400 obituaries before her retirement from the staff of the paper in 2018. Since 2007, Fox has written several nonfiction books.

Early life and education Fox was born in Glen Cove, New York, one of three daughters of David (a physicist) and Laura Garfield. She attended Barnard College in New York City and then Stony Brook University, where she completed her bachelor's degree (1982) and then a master's degree in linguistics in 1983. She received a master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1991. Fox also studied the cello.

Journalist In the 1980s, before attending journalism school, Fox worked in book and magazine publishing. She has written widely on language, culture and ideas for The New York Times, New York Newsday, Variety and other publications. Her work was anthologized in Best Newspaper Writing, 2005. Fox moved to the obituary department of The New York Times in 2004. Since 2013, Fox has been a member of the usage panel of the American Heritage Dictionary.

The Newswomen's Club of New York 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 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 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. Jay Nordlinger, writing in the National Review, called her obit for Peter Schickele "virtuosic". Her writing is featured in The Sense of Style (2014), the writing guide by Steven Pinker.

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."

Author Since 2007, Fox has published five books, and in 2018 she then began to pursue book writing full-time. Reviewing the same book, The Wall Street Journal praised Fox's "eye for the telling detail, a forensic sense of evidence and a relish for research."

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. The New York Times Book Review said that Fox "unspools the men's delightfully elaborate prison-break scheme in nail-biting episodes that advance like a narrative Rube Goldberg machine". Later that year, Thunder Road Films announced that it was developing a film adaptation of the book, with Fox writing the screenplay.

Personal life Fox is married to writer and critic George Robinson.

Selected obituaries

Virginia Hamilton Adair Betty Allen Maya Angelou Emmett L. Bennett, Jr. Christine Brooke-Rose Joyce Brothers Helen Gurley Brown Robert N. Buck Diahann Carroll Robert L. Chapman Lili Chookasian Hugues Cuénod Leo Dillon

Patty Duke Betty Friedan John Gardner Jim Gary Dorothy Gilman Crawford Hallock Greenewalt, Jr. Arthur Haggerty Seamus Heaney Katherine Johnson Fred Kilgour Alice Kober Eppie Lederer (Ann Landers)

Kurt Masur Anne McCaffrey René A. Morel Toni Morrison Patricia Neway Pauline Phillips (Dear Abby) Ingrid Pitt Chaim Potok James Randi Adrienne Rich Anneliese Rothenberger Albert Schatz

Jane Scott Tony Scott Maurice Sendak Peter Schickele Rudi Stern Kirtanananda Swami Keith Tantlinger Dave Tatsuno Marie Tharp Blanche Thebom Dolores Wilson Frances Yeend