Alison Lurie, born in 1926, is an American writer and academic. She has published nine novels, including Foreign Affairs, which won the Pulitzer Prize, one collection of short stories and several works of non-fiction. She has also taught literature, folklore, and creative writing at Cornell University since 1969 and is the Whiton Professor of American Literature emerita. She lives in upstate New York but during her career has routinely spent time in Florida and London, providing inspiration for her novels. Her career as a writer has seen critical and commercial success, and in both her fiction and academic work she has done much to promote the study of children’s literature. She has three sons and three grandchildren.