Judith Viorst

JUDITH VIORST, daughter of a 'passionate reader' and an accountant, read History at Rutgers University from 1948-52. Her first poems were about a 'nice Jewish girl from New Jersey trying to live a wicked life in Greenwich Village' but her main inspiration was marriage and motherhood, three sons being born between 1961 and 1967. Her poems were published in New York magazine and Nova before appearing as It's Hard to be Hip Over Thirty (1968) and People & Other Aggravations (1971). She has written 'hundreds' of magazine articles, two musicals, a novel, four works of non-fiction and fifteen children's books, including Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (1972) which has sold over two million copies.  Her psychoanalytic training led to the bestselling Necessary Losses (1986). Judith Viorst lives with her husband in Washington, DC and has completed an eighth book of poems, I'm Too Young to be Seventy.