Gail Sheehy

Gail Sheehy (born November 27, 1937) is an American author, journalist, and lecturer. She is the author of seventeen books, including Passages (1976), named by the Library of Congress one of the ten most influential books of our times. Sheehy has written biographies and character studies of major twentieth-century leaders, including Hillary Clinton, both presidents Bush, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, and Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev. Her latest book, Daring: My Passages, (Sept. 2014) is a memoir.

Early life and education

Gail Sheehy was born in Mamaroneck, New York, to Lillian and Harold Henion. In 1958, she graduated from the University of Vermont with a Bachelor of Arts in English and Home Economics. In 1970, Sheehy earned her Master of Arts in Journalism from Columbia University, where she studied on a fellowship under renowned cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead.

Career

Journalism

Sheehy played a part in the movement Tom Wolfe called the New Journalism, in which some journalists and essayists experimented with adopting a variety of literary techniques such as scene setting, dialogue, status details to denote social class, and getting inside the story and sometimes reporting the thoughts of a central character. Sheehy's article "The Secret of Grey Gardens", a cover story from the January 10, 1972 issue of New York, brought the bizarre bohemian life of Jacqueline Kennedy's aunt Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale and cousin Edith "Little Edie" Bouvier Beale to public attention. The story was the basis for the film Grey Gardens and a Broadway musical of the same name.

Hillary Clinton

Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton (born October 26, 1947) is an American politician and former United States Senator from New York from 2001 to 2009. She is the wife of the 42nd President of the United States William "Bill" Jefferson Clinton, and was First Lady of the United States during his tenure from 1993 to 2001. She served under current President Barack Obama as the 67th United States Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013. She is a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2016 presidential election.

A native of the Chicago area, Hillary Rodham graduated from Wellesley College in 1969, where she became the first student commencement speaker. She went on to earn her J.D. from Yale Law School in 1973. After a stint as a congressional legal counsel, she moved to Arkansas, marrying Bill Clinton in 1975. She co-founded Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families in 1977, became the first female chair of the Legal Services Corporation in 1978, and was named the first female partner at Rose Law Firm in 1979. While First Lady of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981, and 1983 to 1992, she led a task force that reformed Arkansas' public school system, and served on the board of directors of Wal-Mart among other corporations.

Gail

Gail may refer to:

People

Given name

Gail is a spelling variant of Gale, Gayle (etc.), all a short form of the biblical name Abigail. It has been used as either a masculine or a feminine name, Use of the spelling Gail was equally rare for masculine and feminine use, but feminine use became more popular during the 1930s to 1960s, as a consequence marginalizing masculine usage by about 1960.