Marion Winik

Winik was born in Manhattan in 1958 and grew up on the Jersey shore. She graduated from Brown University in 1978, majoring in History and Semiotics,[2] and received her MFA from Brooklyn College in 1983.[3]

In her childhood and early twenties, Winik focused on writing poetry, publishing two collections, Nonstop and Boycrazy.[4] Winik then began writing personal essays, which were published in The Austin Chronicle.[5] These essays caught John Burnett's eye, who was an NPR reporter based in Austin at the time. He suggested that Winik she work as a commentator for All Things Considered and her first piece was published there in 1991.[6] The following year, a literary agent contact her, resulting in the 1994 publication of Telling, a collection of Winik's essays. [7]

A couple years later in 1996, Winik published First Comes Love, a memoir about her marriage to Tony, who died of AIDS in 1994.[8] In her review of the book in the New York Times, Daphne Merkin wrote, "Marion Winik is resilient, hardy, unfazable; this self-described "suburban boho wannabe" is a frontier woman in disguise."[8]