Margalit Fox

Margalit Fox is an award-winning former senior writer for The New York Times. As a member of the newspaper’s celebrated Obituary News department, she wrote the front-page sendoffs of many of the leading cultural figures of our time, including the pioneering feminist Betty Friedan, the writers Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison, the poets Seamus Heaney and Adrienne Rich and the children’s author Maurice Sendak. She has also written the obituaries of many of the unsung heroes who have quietly put a wrinkle in the social fabric, including the inventors of Etch-a-Sketch, Stove Top stuffing, the frisbee, the bar code and the pink plastic lawn flamingo.

Fox’s work for The Times has won two Front Page Awards from the Newswomen’s Club of New York; it is also prominently featured in "The Sense of Style" (2014), the best-selling guide to writing well by Steven Pinker, and in the acclaimed 2017 documentary film "Obit," by Vanessa Gould. In 2016, the Poynter Institute named Fox one of the six best writers in the history of The New York Times.

Fox is the author of four acclaimed narrative nonfiction books: "Talking Hands: What Sign Language Reveals About the Mind," which follows a group of researchers to a remote Bedouin village whose inhabitants use a sign language unlike any other in the world; "The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code," which was honored with the William Saroyan International Prize for Nonfiction; "Conan Doyle for the Defense: How Sherlock Holmes's Creator Turned Real-Life Detective and Freed a Man Wrongly Imprisoned for Murder," which has been optioned for the screen by Gold Circle Films (producers of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"); and "The Confidence Men: How Two Prisoners of War Engineered the Most Remarkable Escape in History," a finalist for the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. "The Confidence Men" has been optioned by Thunder Road Films (producers of the wildly successful "John Wick" franchise), with a script adapted by Fox, making her screenwriting debut.

Originally trained as a cellist, Fox holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in linguistics from Stony Brook University and a master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Born and raised on Long Island, she currently lives in Manhattan with her husband, the writer and critic George Robinson ("Essential Judaism," "Essential "Torah"). When not reading and writing, she enjoys handspinning, the traditional craft of making yarn on spinning wheels; knitting; cooking, sitting blissfully in coffeehouses; and playing in the Qwerty Ensemble, a chamber-music group comprising present and former New York Times journalists.

Her fifth narrative nonfiction book, "The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum: The Rise and Fall of an American Organized-Crime Boss," the remarkable true story of a nice Jewish mother who rose from tenement poverty to immense wealth as a noted philanthropist, sought-after society hostess and the country's first major mob boss, will be published by Random House on July 2, 2024. Transporting readers to 19th-century New York City--a city of gaslight, glamour and intrigue--the book reveals the world of "Gangs of New York" from the perspective of a sharp-witted, fiercely determined woman. "The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum" is now available for preorder!