Commencement Speaker: Anna Quindlen

It’s official! Anna Quindlen P’07 will be the commencement address speaker!

From an All-Student Email entitled “Wesleyan Honorary Degree Recipients”:

It is with great pleasure that I announce to the Wesleyan community that an award-winning best-selling author, a pioneering entrepreneur and philanthropist and two dedicated members of the Middletown community will be the honorary degree recipients at the 177th Wesleyan Commencement on May 24, 2009.

Anna Quindlen P’07, who will also give the Commencement Address, is a novelist, a journalist, and a champion of higher education. She currently writes the “Last Word” column on the back page of Newsweek and serves as chair of the board of Barnard College, where she received a degree in English literature.
(AP Photo)

Ms. Quindlen has published five novels, all of them bestsellers. Her most recent, Rise and Shine, debuted at number one on The New York Times bestseller list. She has also published many nonfiction books, including Thinking Out Loud, How Reading Changed My Life, and A Short Guide to a Happy Life, which has sold more than a million copies.

Ms. Quindlen spent most of her journalism career at The New York Times, where she wrote three columns, “About New York,” “Life in the 30s,” and “Public and Private.” She won the Pulitzer Prize for her work on the paper’s OpEd page. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and holds honorary degrees from more than a dozen colleges and universities.

Ms. Quindlen is the mother of three children. Her son Christopher Krovatin, also a novelist, graduated from Wesleyan in 2007.

[Via Michael Roth ’78]

32 thoughts on “Commencement Speaker: Anna Quindlen”

  1. Anonymous

    check out google books’ description: In this unusual and beautiful book, Anna Quindlen reflects on what it takes to “get a life” — to live deeply and uniquely, rather than to exist through our days…Quindlen writes, “because unless you know the clock is ticking, it is so easy to waste our days, our lives….” “A Short Guide to a Happy Life” offers guidance on how to live with awareness, and the vitality that comes from knowing how to look at the view.Wow. Besides the fact that this sounds like some dull, mopey bullshit, anyone who tells you they know the secret to making YOU happy is a charlatan. I don’t know the secret of happiness, but a good first step would be to read more intelligent books than one marketed as a palliative to middle-american housefraus staving off depression.

  2. Anonymous

    check out google books’ description:

    In this unusual and beautiful book, Anna Quindlen reflects on what it takes to “get a life” — to live deeply and uniquely, rather than to exist through our days…Quindlen writes, “because unless you know the clock is ticking, it is so easy to waste our days, our lives….” “A Short Guide to a Happy Life” offers guidance on how to live with awareness, and the vitality that comes from knowing how to look at the view.

    Wow. Besides the fact that this sounds like some dull, mopey bullshit, anyone who tells you they know the secret to making YOU happy is a charlatan.
    I don’t know the secret of happiness, but a good first step would be to read more intelligent books than one marketed as a palliative to middle-american housefraus staving off depression.

  3. Anonymous

    boooooooooriiing. This sucks balls. It’s gonna be shit to sit through. I know anyone after Obama would be a let down, but seriously, what a quintessentially bland choice. I have no desire to ever hear anyone who’s written a book titled, “A Short Guide to a Happy Life” give a speech. Jesus! We’ll be lucky if we’re not all spontaneously stricken with diabetes from the high levels of saccharine pouring forth from the podium. While we’re at it, lets just get all the rest of the self-help pseudo-philosophers like Mitch Albom and whoever wrote “Who Moved My Cheese?”

  4. Anonymous

    boooooooooriiing. This sucks balls. It’s gonna be shit to sit through. I know anyone after Obama would be a let down, but seriously, what a quintessentially bland choice. I have no desire to ever hear anyone who’s written a book titled, “A Short Guide to a Happy Life” give a speech. Jesus! We’ll be lucky if we’re not all spontaneously stricken with diabetes from the high levels of saccharine pouring forth from the podium. While we’re at it, lets just get all the rest of the self-help pseudo-philosophers like Mitch Albom and whoever wrote “Who Moved My Cheese?”

  7. Anonymous

    um, we knew it wasn’t going to be obama againbut i think quindlen’s a pretty sweet pick and people should be happy

  8. Anonymous

    um, we knew it wasn’t going to be obama again
    but i think quindlen’s a pretty sweet pick and people should be happy

  19. Anonymous

    damn. i was hoping for dick cheney or sarah palin as a way to balance out last year. so much for this school’s rhetoric of “open-mindedness” and dialogue with all groups.

  20. Anonymous

    damn. i was hoping for dick cheney or sarah palin as a way to balance out last year. so much for this school’s rhetoric of “open-mindedness” and dialogue with all groups.

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