About Gail

 | January 2009

As a cultural observer and bestselling author, Gail Sheehy has changed the way millions of people look at their lives. In her history-making books and introspective commentary, Ms. Sheehy has addressed fundamental questions that apply to women and men as they move through the stages of adult life from adolescence into their seasoned years.

The author of 15 books, Ms. Sheehy is world-renowned for the revolutionary Passages, which remained on The New York Times bestseller list for more than three years and has been reprinted in 28 languages. A Library of Congress survey named Passages one of the 10 most-influential books of our time. In The Silent Passage, she broke the taboo surrounding menopause in 1992 and opened a dialogue vital to maturing women's health. In New Passages and Understanding Men's Passages, she revisited the stages of adult life and mapped out a completely new frontier entitled "second adulthood." And in 2006, in Sex and The Seasoned Woman: Pursuing the Passionate Life, she lent her observant eye to the opportunities and challenges facing women concerning sex, dating, new dreams, divorce, remarriage, and living passionate lives in their second adulthood.

In 2009, Ms. Sheehy takes on a new role, Caregiving Ambassador for AARP, the leading advocate for 50-plus Americans. Her mission is to help a generation navigate the emotional and practical sides of the caregiver role, facing some 44 million Americans who are taking care of adults at home or long distance. 

Ms. Sheehy is collaborating with AARP to write the first draft of her next book, about the caregiving crisis, using new media. On her Web pages at www.aarp.org/gailsheehy, she will present videos of families she has filmed around the country who are finding creative ways around of the obstacles of caregiving.

Throughout 2009, Ms. Sheehy will write journals about her own caregiving experiences in the AARP.org Online Community, where readers can interact with her. "It is a tale both cautionary and inspirational, and one that readers will identify with both emotionally and situationally," she says. Her mission is to collect the voices of many caregivers in all kinds of situations, and to create a powerful network that can grow into a movement.

Ms. Sheehy culminated her first decade of Hillary-watching with the biography, Hillary's Choice, exploring the life of one of the world's most intriguing women.

Her book, Middletown, America: One Town's Passage from Trauma to Hope, provided an insightful chronicle of the trauma and struggle of the people who remained after the terrorist attack of 9/11.

As a literary journalist, Ms. Sheehy was one of the original contributors to New York magazine. A contributing editor to Vanity Fair since 1984, she won the Washington Journalism Review Award for Best Magazine Writer in America for her in-depth character portraits of national and world leaders, including both Presidents Bush, Bill and Hillary Clinton, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, and Mikhail Gorbachev. Ms. Sheehy is a seven-time recipient of the New York Newswomen's Club Front Page Award for distinguished journalism.

One of the most popular speakers on the lecture circuit, Ms. Sheehy offers dynamic programs based on her groundbreaking investigations and observations of the lives of men and women within different phases of their lives and how they can enjoy them to the fullest.