Renata Adler was born in Milan and raised in Connecticut. She received a B. A. from Bryn Mawr, an M. A. from Harvard, a D. d'E. S. from the Sorbonne, a J. D. from Yale Law School, and an LL. D. (honorary) from Georgetown. Adler became a staff writer at The New Yorker in 1962 and, except for a year as the chief film critic of The New York Times, remained at The New Yorker for the next four decades. Her books include A Year in the Dark (1969); Toward a Radical Middle (1970); Reckless Disregard: Westmoreland v. CBS et al. , Sharon v. Time (1986); Canaries in the Mineshaft (2001); Gone: The Last Days of The New Yorker (1999); Irreparable Harm: The U. S. Supreme Court and The Decision That Made George W. Bush President (2004); and the novels Speedboat (1976; winner of the Ernest Hemingway Award for Best First Novel) and Pitch Dark (1983).
Muriel Spark (1918-2006) was a Scottish novelist and poet. Among the best known of her twenty-two novels are The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The Girls of Slender Means, Memento Mori, and Loitering with Intent. In 1993 she was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
