American writer
Ilene Beckerman (born 1935) is an American writer, who was not published until she was 60 years old, and a former advertising agency executive. She is best known for her first book Love, Loss, and What I Wore, published in 1995, which in 2008 became a successful play written by Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron based on her book.
Early life
Ilene Beckerman was born in 1935,[1] and grew up in Manhattan in the 1940s and 1950s.[2]
Career
Beckerman did not start her career as a writer until she was almost 60 years old, after having risen to become vice-president of an advertising agency.[3][2] Her journalism has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Ladies' Home Journal.[3]
In 1995, at the age of 60, Beckerman published Love, Loss, and What I Wore, which Publishers Weekly called a " "captivating little pictorial autobiography for adults ... a wry commentary on the pressures women constantly face to look good".[2][1]
In 2011, she published, The Smartest Woman I Know, an account of her life with her grandmother, Ettie Goldberg, who she lived with after her mother died.[4]
Personal life
When she was 12 years old, her mother died, and she went to live in Manhattan with her grandparents, who ran a candy store on Madison Avenue between 64th and 65th Streets.[4]
In 1955, aged 20 years, Beckerman married her Boston sociology professor, 17 years her senior.[2] The marriage was short-lived and ended in divorce. She married again, and had six children, one of whom died in infancy, and eventually divorced.[2]
Beckerman lives in Bethlehem Township, New Jersey, with her husband Stanley.[4]
