Top Qs
Timeline
Chat
Perspective
Taffy Brodesser-Akner
American journalist and author From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Remove ads
Taffy Brodesser-Akner (born Stephanie Akner) is an American journalist and author. She has worked freelance and as a contributor to GQ and The New York Times, where she is now a staff writer. Her profiles of celebrities have won her the New York Press Club Award and Mirror Award.
Remove ads
Career
Summarize
Perspective
Journalism
Brodesser-Akner's first major journalism job was at Soap Opera Weekly, a job she held until it was eliminated due to layoffs in 2001.[1] She also wrote for Mediabistro[2] and did freelance pieces for magazines including ESPN The Magazine, GQ, and Texas Monthly. The Columbia Journalism Review called her "one of the nation's most successful freelance writers".[3] In 2014, she became a contributing writer to both The New York Times and GQ,[2] and won a New York Press Club Award for entertainment news in a magazine for her story about actress Gaby Hoffmann.[4] She won two New York Press Club awards in 2015, for her profiles of Damon Lindelof and Britney Spears.[5] The same year, Brodesser-Akner was nominated for a Mirror Award for her profile of Joey Soloway,[6] and in 2016 she won the award for her profile of broadcaster Don Lemon.[7] In 2017, she became a full-time staff writer at The New York Times.[8]
Fiction and television
Her first novel, Fleishman Is in Trouble, was published in 2019 by Random House in the US[9][10] and by Wildfire in the UK.[11] The novel was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2020.[12] Brodesser-Akner adapted the novel as a TV miniseries, which debuted on Hulu on November 17, 2022.[13] In 2023, she was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. Her second novel, Long Island Compromise, was published in 2024 by Random House in the US[14] and by Wildfire in the UK.[15]
Remove ads
Personal life
Born Stephanie Akner, Brodesser-Akner received the nickname "Taffy" at a young age and continued using it professionally.[16] She grew up in Brooklyn, New York,[17] in an Orthodox Jewish household.[18] She attended New York University.
She married Claude Brodesser in 2006.[17] Brodesser converted to Judaism,[17] a process that eventually led Akner to evaluate and reinforce her own observance of Jewish customs.[19] After marrying, both took hyphenated last names.[16] They have two children.[20] She wrote that as a "3G" grandchild of Holocaust survivors, she was particularly alarmed when her son was called an antisemitic slur on the basketball court in Riverside Park, and her other son had a caricature done in Times Square that evoked antisemitic tropes.[21]
Remove ads
Bibliography
- Fleishman is in Trouble (2019, Random House)
- Long Island Compromise (2024, Random House)
References
External links
Wikiwand - on
Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.
Remove ads