Nancy Rubin Stuart

Nancy, Director Cape Cod Writers Center Conference August 2010

Nancy at the statue of Mercy Otis Warren

Nancy Pins Josephine Ives, the Mercy Otis Warren Cape Cod Woman of the Year July 4, 2008

Nancy signing one of her books.

Nancy's non-fiction articles have appeared in:

The New York Times

American History Magazine

New England Quarterly

The Los Angeles Times

Newsday

The Baltimore Sun

Barnstable Patriot

Business Week's Careers

The Stamford Advocate

Greenwich Time

Child Magazine

Cape Cod Magazine

ForeWord Magazine

The Journal of Socio-Economic Studies

Law Firm, Inc.

Ladies' Home Journal

ForeWord Magazine

Savvy

Travel & Leisure

The Barnstable Patriot

The Courier-Journal

Family Circle

Child

Parents

Success Unlimited

Chateleine

A & E Magazine

American Imago


Biography

Enjoying the delights of reading and writing by the ocean

Nancy Rubin Stuart is an award-winning author and journalist who specializes in women, biography and social history.

At nine years of age, she wrote short stories about her dog and neighborhood friends. " As a redhead I was often teased," Nancy recalls. "Perhaps that has something to do with becoming a writer, that sense of being an outsider, an observer."

Born in Boston, Nancy graduated from Tufts University with a B.A. in English and an M.A.T. from Brown University. In 1995, Mount Vernon College, now part of Georgetown University, awarded her an honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters.

While raising children, Nancy wrote for the New York Times under the byline of Nancy Rubin. Her work for that newspaper and personal experiences as a suburban mother led to her first book, The New Suburban Woman: Beyond Myth and Motherhood .

Later books under that byline were The Mother Mirror: How a Generation of Women Is Changing Motherhood in America , Isabella of Castile: The First Renaissance Queen , and the best-selling American Empress: The Life and Times of Marjorie Merriweather Post .

From the late 1990s to 2001 Nancy wrote for A & E Network's series "America's Castles" and for HGTV's series "Restore America." In 2005 Harcourt published her biography on the co-founder of American spiritualism,entitled The Reluctant Spiritualist: The Life of Maggie Fox which won an Outstanding Book Award for Nonfiction from the American Society of Authors and Journalists.

Subsequent to Nancy's receipt of a William Randolph Hearst Award from the American Antiquarian Society for research, Beacon Press published The Muse of the Revolution: The Secret Pen of Mercy Otis Warren and the Founding of a Nation in 2008. Reissued in paperback in 2009, that book recently won the 2009 Historic Winslow House Book Award.

Other honors include three Telly Awards from the cable television industry, the 1992 Author of the Year Award from the American Society of Authors and Journalists, the Washington Irving Award from the Westchester Library System, a Time, Inc. scholarship from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and a fellowship from the MacDowell Colony.

A speaker for the New York Council for the Humanities, Nancy has appeared on C-Span's BookTV, the A & E Series “Mansions, Monuments and Masterpieces” and “America’s Castles,” on Oprah, on CBS Morning News and on National Public Radio. She makes frequent appearances at colleges and book clubs and before audiences ranging from the Palm Beach Society of the Four Arts to Manhattan's National Arts Club.

As a journalist, her work has appeared in many publications including The New York Times, American History Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, The New England Quarterly, The Stamford Advocate, Greenwich Time, Business Week’s Careers, Family Circle, Savvy and Travel and Leisure.

Today she writes for print and screen, serves on the board for the Women Writing Womens' Lives Seminar, City University of New York Graduate Center and is director of the 2010 Cape Cod Writers Center Conference.

A former resident of Manhattan, she and her husband Bill recently moved to Massachusetts. Besides spending time with her family and friends, Nancy enjoys dancing, skiing, gardening, traveling and the cultural life of Boston and New York.

A winter walk -- a refreshing break from the computer

MY RECENT BOOKS
THE MUSE OF THE REVOLUTION: The Secret Pen of Mercy Otis Warren and the Founding of a Nation

( Boston: Beacon Press, 2008, 2009)

Winner of the 1699 Historic Winslow House Book Award
A riveting biography of one of America's boldest and most influential-but least recognized-Founding Mothers.

"A new biography… illuminates startling similarities between our present political landscape and that of our founding fathers and mothers." --Cape Cod Times, October 26, 2008

"This wonderfully researched and readable book has done an excellent job of giving another view of what it took to make this country. Essential for academic and public libraries. Enjoy!" -- Library Journal, May 1, 2008

“This commendable biography follows the life of New England patriot Mercy Otis Warren (1728–1814), the celebrated—and sometimes reviled—writer of poems, plays, history and satire... Warren emerges as a fully fleshed-out woman with literary insecurities, intractable opinions and a high-strung temper as well as deep affection for her husband and sons. Stuart includes fascinating period details, focusing primarily on Warren's home-front experiences of rampant inflation, scarcity of goods, high taxes and profiteering during the Revolution as well as typical 18th-century illnesses and family anxieties. Most poignantly, Stuart depicts Warren's loneliness and despair after the deaths of three of her five sons. This account is valuable as an eyewitness play-by-play of the American Revolution and will be a great resource to scholars of women's and literary history." --Publisher's Weekly, May 5, 2008

"Concise and readable... focuses on a founding mother who wrote in part because that was the one way a woman could contribute to the Revolution... there's plenty in Stuart's pages for those interested in the drama of the woman writer in Western culture." -- Boston Globe, June 29, 2008

"This dramatic biography makes it clear that future President Adams relied extensively upon advice from his wife, Abigail, as well as upon the guidance of Mercy Otis Warren...As Stuart demonstrates , Warren was a woman of independent hopes and dreams who believed strongly that she could express important ideas to the new American republic with her writing. Thankfully, she was right." --American Spirit, The Magazine of the Daughters of the American Revolution, July /August 2008

"Incredible source data, smooth narratives built around chapters, fragmented around specific moments, and intricate use of historical detail and setting...Stuart breathes new life into an early American poet and historian too often left out of historical discussion." -- Metro Spirit, Augusta, Georgia, July 2, 2008

"Nancy Rubin Stuart, the author of several popular biographies, presents Warren in a colorfully anecdotal style. Given the difficulty of reconstructing warren's life, Stuart has artfully set the story in the context of the Revolution and relied upon her subject's friendships, especially with the Admses. The pace is brisk, if not jaunty... As a lively introduction to the great Mercy Otis Warren, this book is appealing." -- Wilson Quarterly, Summer 2008

Other Recent Books by the Author

Biography
The Reluctant Spiritualist: The Life of Maggie Fox
( New York: Harcourt, 2005)

“Fascinating biography...The great strength of Stuart's book is that she provides the necessary historical context...convincingly places the Fox sisters at a nexus of social and political change...offers fresh insight into the bored young girl with the toes heard round the world.” -- Washington Post "Stuart has created a richly sympathetic portrait of a fascinating and tragic woman, trapped by her family, her times, and her own aching heart, a woman who...didn't have the mettle or the means to make her own way, but was swept along in the era's spiritualism fever." --Boston Globe “This life story opens an illuminating window on an era and a movement. --Booklist, American Library Association "Diligently researched biography of the young woman responsible in the mid-1800s for the growth of spiritualism...Stuart capably chronicles this period of reliigous ferment...vividly details the course of ( Maggie's)ill-starred romance...a persuasive study of an unusual life." --Kirkus Reviews "The Reluctant Spiritualist is certainly a not-to-be missed biography of a fascinating personality. But it is much more… the enigmatic history of a curious but important period in the spiritual history of America. --Nimble Spirit Reviews "Fast-paced..highly readable and entertaining." -- Publishers Weekly
Biography
American Empress: The Life and Times of Marjorie Merriweather Post
(New York: Villard Books, 1995 ; ASJA Press, 2002)

"This entrancing biography is full of high drama,gossip, scandal, and international political intrigue." -- Publisher's Weekly
Isabella of Castile: The First Renaissance Queen
( New York, St. Martin's Press, 1991, 1992) )

"An artful, sensitive biography… A prerequisite for understanding Isabella is understanding the period and Rubin excels at delineating both." --Booklist