Taffy Brodesser-Akner

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. Her first novel, Fleishman Is in Trouble, achieved widespread success.

Taffy Brodesser-Akner
Born	Stephanie Akner 1975 or 1976 (age 49–50) New York City, U.S.
Alma mater	New York University
Occupation	Journalist
Spouse	Claude Brodesser-Akner ​ ​ (m. 2006)​
Children	2
Website	www.taffyakner.com

Career

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] Many of her freelance articles were celebrity profiles, several of which went viral.^[4] 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.^[5] She won two New York Press Club awards in 2015, for her profiles of Damon Lindelof and Britney Spears.^[6] The same year, Brodesser-Akner was nominated for a Mirror Award for her profile of Joey Soloway,^[7] and in 2016 she won the award for her profile of broadcaster Don Lemon.^[8] In 2017, she became a full-time staff writer at The New York Times.^[4]

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]

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]

Bibliography

• Fleishman is in Trouble (2019, Random House)
• Long Island Compromise (2024, Random House)