Deirdre Bair was an American literary scholar and biographer.
14 Facts About Deirdre Bair
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Deirdre Bair won a National Book Award for her biography of Samuel Beckett in 1981.
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Deirdre Bair's father was a small-business owner, her mother a homemaker.
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Deirdre Bair went on to earn her Master of Arts degree and Doctor of Philosophy degree, both in comparative literature, at Columbia University.
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Deirdre Bair worked as a stringer for Newsweek and a reporter for the New Haven Register before earning her doctorate.
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At various times during her life, Deirdre Bair served as a visiting professor, writer in residence, or distinguished scholar at Ohio State University, Bennington College, Macquarie University, Griffith University, and Australian National University.
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Deirdre Bair was a visiting lecturer at Paris VII, University of Kassel, Uppsala University, and University College Dublin.
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Deirdre Bair was awarded fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the New York Institute for the Humanities, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute, among other institutions.
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Deirdre Bair authored seven biographies and one autobiography during her lifetime.
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Deirdre Bair received a 1981 National Book Award for Samuel Beckett: A Biography.
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Deirdre Bair's Calling It Quits: Late-Life Divorce and Starting Over was profiled on CBS's The Early Show, NBC's The Today Show, the Brian Lehrer radio show, and CBC Canada.
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Deirdre Bair published a biography of cartoonist Saul Steinberg in 2012 and a biography of Chicago mobster Al Capone in 2016, using previously unknown sources from his family.
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Deirdre Bair died of a heart attack at home in New Haven, Connecticut, on April 17,2020.
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Deirdre Bair was survived by her children and other relatives.