Alexandra Styron

Claire Alexandra Styron, known as Alexandra Styron,^[1] is an American author and professor.

Styron at a book reading in New Orleans, 2012

Early life and education

Styron is the youngest child of author William Styron and poet and human rights activist Rose Burgunder.^[2] She grew up in Roxbury, Connecticut, and in Martha's Vineyard.^[3][4] Styron attended Barnard College, and later the MFA Creative Writing program at Columbia University.^[5]

Career

After a brief stint as an actress, Styron turned to writing and is the author of several books. Her most-noted work, the 2011 memoir Reading My Father, detailed her life growing up with the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and explored his decades-long struggle with major clinical depression. The book was published by Scribner to strong reviews.^[6] In The New York Times Book Review, James Campbell described the book as “brilliant and shocking.”^[7] Reading My Father was nominated for the L.A. Times book award and long-listed for The New York Times bestseller list.^[8]

Styron is a professor in the MFA Creative Writing program at Hunter College in New York City.^[9]

Selected works

• All The Finest Girls (2001),^[10] a novel;
• Reading My Father (2011),^[11] a memoir about her father, author William Styron;
• Steal This Country: A Handbook for Resistance, Persistence, and Fixing (Almost) Everything (2018),^[12] a young adult guide to activism.