(Updated July 1, 2002)
Nan Robertson was a reporter and feature writer for The New York Times for more than three decades in New York, Washington and Paris. "Toxic Shock," based on her own nearly fatal struggle with the disease, was a cover story in the New York Times Sunday Magazine: it was for this account that Robertson won the Pulitzer Prize in 1983 for feature writing. She was the third woman on The Times staff to win journalism's highest award since the Pultizers were established in 1917.
Her ultimate assignment on The Times was with the culture news department, covering the performing arts-theater, films, dance, music-and authors from 1983 through 1988. From 1975 through 1982, she was a reporter for the Living and Style sections.
Between 1972 and 1975, Robertson was based in Paris, covering France, neighboring countries, and the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. From 1963 through 1972, she was a Times Washington correspondent, focusing on the White House, Congress, presidential campaigns and voting and campus political trends across the United States. Previously, Robertson did general assignment reporting for the city desk, and women's news.
Before coming to The Times, Robertson was a special correspondent in Paris, Berlin, Frankfurt and London for the New York Herald Tribune European Edition (now the International Herald Tribune), the Milwaukee Journal and Stars & Stripes.
She was born July 11, 1926, in Chicago, and was graduated with honors from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in 1948.
In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, Robertson has won many awards. She was a Fellow at the MacDowell Colony in 1981 and 1983. The Newswomen's Club of New York gave her its Feature Writing Award in 1962, its Best Feature Front Page Award in 1980, and, in 1982, an unprecedented Special Award for Excellence for her toxic shock article. In 1983, the Newspaper Guild of New York voted her their Page One award. Also in 1983, she was awarded a Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship. She has been a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at a different campus almost every year since.
In 1988, she was a Visiting Journalism Fellow at Duke University. In 1991, she won Northwestern University's Alumnae Award for bringing "honor to the university by making significant contributions in her field." In 1992, NU gave her the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters. In 1993, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Women's Media Foundation. In 1994, she became the first Eugene L. Roberts Visiting Professor of Journalism at the University of Maryland.
Her book Getting Better: Inside Alcoholics Anonymous was published in 1988 by William Morrow, and in 1989 in softcover by Fawcett. It was a Book of the Month Club Alternate Selection. Random House published Robertson's newest book, The Girls in the Balcony: Women, Men, and The New York Times, in 1992. It has received massive press coverage and praise from critics and readers nationwide. Fawcett Columbine brought out the paperback in 1993.