Elizabeth Benedict
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Elizabeth Benedict is editor of the anthology, Mentors, Muses & Monsters: 30 Writers on the People Who Changed Their Lives, as well as author of five critically acclaimed novels. Hallie Ephron in the Boston Globe called her most recent novel, The Practice of Deceit "a wickedly funny literary suspense novel" that is "wry, at times heartbreaking, always smart and entertaining." "Newsweek and Fresh Air's" Maureen Corrigan chose her previous novel, the bestseller Almost, one of the top five novels of 2001.

Her first novel, Slow Dancing>, published in 1985, was shortlisted for the National Book Award. She is also the author of several other novels and of a classic book, The Joy of Writing Sex , which is used widely in writing programs. She has taught fiction and non-fiction writing at Princeton, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Swarthmore College, and Columbia, and has written for The New York Times, Daedalus, Salmagundi, Esquire, Tin House, Harper's Bazaar, and The American Prospect.

Blog Entries by Elizabeth Benedict

The New Alimony Laws In MA -- And Maybe In FL, NJ, CT, And OR?

(176) Comments | Posted March 7, 2012 | 11:50 AM

"So you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war?" Abraham Lincoln is said to have asked Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, published in 1849, was an instant bestseller and dramatized the horrors of slavery for all to see, years before the fighting...

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'Charlotte au Chocolat' in Harvard Square

(0) Comments | Posted February 29, 2012 | 1:15 PM

It doesn't happen often that a memoir reminds me of one of the masterpieces of the personal essay, Joan Didion's love letter to New York, the classic "Goodbye to All That." Despite its frilly cover, Charlotte Silver's Charlotte au Chocolat: Memories of a Restaurant Girlhood is a rightful...

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Writers' Valentines to Their Mentors

(0) Comments | Posted February 13, 2012 | 2:12 PM

This is not news: Writers are famously cranky, infamously jealous, hopelessly self-involved. But several years ago, I unleashed a whole lot of gratitude and love in a group of wonderful writers.

It happened like this: In 2008, hours after writing a tribute for Tin House...

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Florida and New Jersey Alimony Injustices

(251) Comments | Posted January 20, 2012 | 11:00 AM

Because alimony laws vary from state to state, the national media have usually steered clear of the issue. But that is changing fast, with "Fox and Friends" recent broadcast on the subject and USA Today's sweeping article on the reform movement, "Should Alimony Laws Be Changed?,"...

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Miami-Bound: My List of What's Cool, Hot, Sexy, Arty, Fun, and/or Delicious

(0) Comments | Posted January 14, 2012 | 7:58 AM

A month ago, some friends in New York wondered aloud where to go for a few weeks this winter to get away from the cold. They mentioned Spain. I countered with Miami. They were skeptical. They remembered Miami from back in the day: the dull place our Jewish grandparents went...

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Alimony Reform Sweeps the Coast: MA, New Jersey, and Florida

(176) Comments | Posted November 16, 2011 | 11:11 AM

Strong weather usually moves from Florida up the East Coast. But in this case, the winds of change are going in the other direction.

Call it the Massachusetts Miracle: A grassroots organization founded and run by a man who owns a printing and copy store, Stephen Hitner of

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Ondaatje Magic One More Time: The Cat's Table

(1) Comments | Posted October 20, 2011 | 12:04 PM

Back in the day, Michael Ondaatje had the dubious distinction of being "a writer's writer," shorthand for fabulous, literary, and out of reach for ordinary folk.

Since The English Patient -- the Booker Prize-winning novel and the Academy Award-winning film -- he's an international star, and each...

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Holocaust Stories Yet to Be Told: Toynton's The Oriental Wife

(1) Comments | Posted September 28, 2011 | 1:06 PM

There are still stories to be told about the Holocaust and its aftermath, and Evelyn Toynton's second novel, The Oriental Wife, belongs on the shelf with the very best of them. Despite the title, it's the story of a group of German Jews who move to America in...

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Novelists and the College Application Essay

(2) Comments | Posted September 22, 2011 | 3:45 PM

When creating a new website, I had to decide which of my literary hats to lead my bio with: "novelist, journalist, editor" or a "journalist, novelist, editor." All three of us -- me, myself and I -- coach high school students on writing college application essays, and a friend, the...

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Space Shuttle Sinks, Florida Alimony Wars Soar

(62) Comments | Posted August 29, 2011 | 4:00 PM

The end of the 30-year-old Space Shuttle Program is old news, but every layoff hits every worker and every family hard when the pink slip finally comes. And a new round of layoffs is scheduled for October.

The folks who lose their jobs at the Kennedy Space Center have a...

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Zen and the Art of Writing Your College Application Essay

(6) Comments | Posted August 15, 2011 | 11:00 AM

In case high school seniors and their parents aren't jittery enough about what lies ahead -- College App Apoplexy -- The New York Times raised the stakes recently with an article that spent a day or two on the "most emailed" list: "For a Standout College Essay, Applicants...

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Alimony in the Air: Arnold, Maria, Massachusetts and Florida

(75) Comments | Posted August 1, 2011 | 12:44 PM

In every corner of the country -- California, Massachusetts, Florida -- spousal support is in the news. These last two weeks have been a crash course in what we talk about when we talk about alimony.

Arnold Schwarzenegger has done an about-face on spousal support for Maria Shriver, whose own...

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Good News About the Maid and the Powerful Man

(1) Comments | Posted May 18, 2011 | 2:26 PM

This is not just a case of he said, she said.

This is a scenario better suited to the movies: the powerful man and the hotel maid. She enters his high-priced suite, thinking it's unoccupied, and before she learns better, he emerges from a room naked and tries to rape...

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Joyce Carol Oates: A Widow's Derangement

(4) Comments | Posted March 11, 2011 | 12:34 PM

A Widow's Story is called a memoir, but the word seems too slight for the grandeur of what Joyce Carol Oates does in this work of startling intimacy, humanity, humility, and wisdom -- "Wisdom one might do without," she says, "if wisdom springs from terrible loss."

Working from...

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The Lost Art of Staring into Space

(25) Comments | Posted February 24, 2011 | 2:19 PM

"Which do you prefer -- sex or a pastrami sandwich?" one guy asks another, though it's not a proposition but a light-hearted survey. "To tell you the truth," the other guy says, "sometimes the sandwich." This exchange is lodged in my memory, overheard a dozen years ago at a restaurant.

...
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Lifetime Alimony in Massachusetts: You're Kidding, Right? Wrong.

(53) Comments | Posted February 8, 2011 | 10:55 AM

You may have heard Massachusetts is a liberal state. You may have heard it was the first state to legalize gay marriage (true!). You may have heard about those crazy Kennedys--Senator Ted was a liberal before Scott Brown went to his first tea party.

But on the subject of alimony,...

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Not Your Grandmother's Miami -- On A Budget

(4) Comments | Posted January 24, 2011 | 2:00 PM

The last time I visited Florida was when my father died in 2002, and the time before that was when I moved my aunt up north from a retirement community. Call me "down on Florida" -- until two weeks ago, when my mate and I spent ten days in Miami,...

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Sarah Palin and the Tiger Mom

(21) Comments | Posted January 18, 2011 | 5:26 PM

News flash: The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother wasn't the original title of the memoir du jour. The publisher wanted The Helicopter Mom from Hell, but rumor has it that author Amy Chua had a temper tantrum, and that was that.

When the publisher offered another, The Battle Hymn...

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One Last Sweet Summer Read

(8) Comments | Posted August 20, 2010 | 4:27 PM

All books published posthumously come to us shrink-wrapped in heartache, from a voice we know has already been extinguished. There is more sadness still in a subgroup of this category: books that come from manuscripts abandoned during wartime or hidden for safekeeping and discovered when the fighting is over, when...

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"Only Disconnect..." With Hemingway's Notebook

(5) Comments | Posted August 11, 2010 | 1:32 PM

Call it going cold turkey. Earlier this summer, I knew I had to seize -- and slightly alter -- E.M. Forster's famous command, "Only connect..." So off I went to a cabin in the woods of Maine with no Internet or cell phone service in order to "only disconnect." I...

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