Amanda Vaill

Vaill at the 69th Annual Peabody Awards

Amanda Vaill is an American writer and editor, noted for her non-fiction. She lives in New York City.

A graduate of Harvard University, she worked in publishing before becoming a writer full-time in 1992. In the 1970s Vaill was an editor at Viking Press alongside Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.[1]

In 1995 Vaill published Everybody Was So Young, a biography of Gerald and Sara Murphy, prominent 1920s socialites of the French Riviera. It was nominated for the 1995 National Book Critics Circle Award in biography.[2] She also contributed to the catalogue for Making It New: The Art and Style of Sara and Gerald Murphy, an exhibition mounted by the Williams College Museum of Art, and also shown at the Yale Art Gallery and the Dallas Museum of Art.[3] Her next book was Somewhere, a biography of choreographer Jerome Robbins. Vaill was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2000 for her work on Robbins.[4]

Vaill wrote Something to Dance About a 2009 PBS documentary about Robbins life and work.[5] It was broadcast as part of PBS's American Masters series and directed by Judy Kinberg. Vaill was nominated for the 2009 Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for Nonfiction Programming for Something to Dance About,[5] and the film won both an Emmy[6] and a George Foster Peabody Award.[7] The 2000 television film Sex & Mrs. X, starring Linda Hamilton, was based on a 1999 article Vaill wrote for Allure.[8]

In 2008 Vaill co-wrote a book on her grandfather, the jeweller Seaman Schepps. Her new book is on the personalities associated with Madrid's Hotel Florida during the Spanish Civil War.[9]

Vaill has also written for Esquire, The New York Observer, Talk, Harper’s Bazaar, Architectural Digest among others.[10]

Bibliography

  • 1995 - Everybody Was So Young: Gerald and Sara Murphy - A Lost Generation Love Story
  • 2007 - Somewhere: The Life of Jerome Robbins
  • 2008 - Seaman Schepps: A Century of New York Jewelry Design (with Janet Zapata)
  • 2014 - Hotel Florida

As editor

  • 1994 - O Henry: Selected Stories

References

  1. ^ Greg Lawrence (4 January 2011). Jackie as Editor: The Literary Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. St. Martin's Press. pp. 59–. ISBN 978-1-4299-7518-6. Retrieved 27 May 2013.
  2. ^ "National Book Critics Circle Awards - 1995". National Book Critics Circle. Archived from the original on 27 April 2019. Retrieved 27 May 2013.
  3. ^ "Making It New: The Art and Style of Sara and Gerald Murph". Williams College Museum of Art website. Retrieved 4 June 2013.
  4. ^ "Primetime Emmy Awards nominations for 2009". Emmy Awards. Archived from the original on 3 October 2013. Retrieved 27 May 2013.
  5. ^ a b "Primetime Emmy Awards nominations for 2009". English Heritage list. Emmy Awards. Retrieved 27 May 2013.
  6. ^ "Primetime Emmy Awards nominations for 2012 - Outstanding Nonfiction Series". Retrieved 4 June 2013.
  7. ^ "American Masters: Jerome Robbins -- Something to Dance About (PBS)". Retrieved 4 June 2013.
  8. ^ "Amanda Viall - Film and Television". Amanda Viall. Archived from the original on 2013-06-28. Retrieved 27 May 2013.
  9. ^ "Amanda Viall - Books". Amanda Viall. Archived from the original on 2013-06-28. Retrieved 27 May 2013.
  10. ^ "Amanda Vaill - Journalism". Amanda Viall. Archived from the original on 2013-06-28. Retrieved 27 May 2013.