...there is still a kind of unique loneliness to child rearing for women. We so often do it in isolation. Add to the fact that in our competitive, perfectionist culture, in which the price woman are required to pay for freedom still seems to be martyrdom, almost everyone lies about motherhood. Part of that lying is loyalty - I can't let on that my kid is the only one on the playground who can't read or play the piano - and part of it is self-protection, since we've made hyper-motherhood a measure of female success. The preferred answer to the question "How are you?" is always "Fine," and the answer to the question "How are the kids?" is supposed to be "Great!" That's true even if the accurate answers would be "terrible" and "a mess." I think it produces its own kind of desperation, especially for women, who yearn to be emotionally open.

Luke's School in New York. Much of her personal writing centers on her mother who died at the age of 40 from ovarian cancer when Quindlen was 19 years old. (2007)
Lots of Candles Plenty of Cake (2012)


Novels
Object Lessons (1991)
One True Thing (1994)
Black and Blue (1998)
Blessings (2002)
Rise and Shine (2006)
Every Last One: A Novel (2010)


Children's books
The Tree That Came To Stay (Illustrated by Nancy Carpenter) (1992)
Happily Ever After (Illustrated by James Stevenson) (1997)


New table pictorials
Naked Babies (Photographs by Nick Kelsh) (1996)
Siblings (Photographs by Nick Kelsh) (1998)


Speeches
1999 commencement speech Mount Holyoke College
2000 commencement speech Villanova University
2002 commencement speech Sarah Lawrence College
2006 commencement speech Colby College
2008 commencement speech Kenyon College
2009 commencement speech Wesleyan University
2011 commencement speech Grinnell College


Awards


Industry Awards
1992 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary
2001 Mothers At Home Media Award
2001 Clarion Award for Best Regular Opinion Column in a magazine
2002 Clarion Award for Best Opinion Column from the Association for Women in Communications


Honorary Degrees
Dartmouth College
Denison University
Grinnell College May 2011
Kenyon College May 2008
Moravian College
Mount Holyoke College
Smith College
Stevens Institute of Technology
Nantucket High School
Penn State
Villanova University
Wesleyan University[1]


Other Awards from Universities
University Medal of Excellence from Columbia
Poynter Fellow in Journalism at Yale
Victoria Fellow in Contemporary Issues at Rutgers
Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Honorary Doctorate from The Pennsylvania State University (Aug.

Anna Marie Quindlen (born July 8 1952) is an American author journalist and opinion columnist whose New York Times column Public and Private won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1992. Between 1977 and 1994 Anna Quindlen held several posts at The New York Times.