SALLY BEDELL SMITH
Sally Bedell Smith is the best-selling author of six biographies: Elizabeth the
Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch (Random House 2012), For Love of Politics:
Inside the Clinton White House (Random House, 2007), Grace and Power: The Private
World of the Kennedy White House (Random House, 2004), Diana in Search of Herself:
Portrait of a Troubled Princess (Times Books/Random House, 1999), Reflected Glory:
The Life of Pamela Churchill Harriman (Simon & Schuster, 1996), and In All His Glory:
The Life & Times of William S. Paley and the Birth of Modern Broadcasting (Simon &
Schuster, 1990).
Ms. Smith began her career at Time magazine where she was a reporter-researcher
from 1973 to 1977. She then joined TV Guide as a staff writer where she wrote feature
articles and a weekly column. In 1982, Ms. Smith became a cultural news reporter for
The New York Times, a position she held until 1985. She joined Vanity Fair as a
contributing editor in 1996.
Ms. Smith was awarded the Sigma Delta Chi Distinguished Service Award for
magazine reporting in 1982 and was a fellow at the Freedom Forum Media Studies
Center at Columbia University from 1986 to 1987. In November 2008 she was inducted
into the Radnor High School Hall of Fame. She has been named the 2012 recipient of the
Washington Irving Medal for Literary Excellence, an award presented by the Saint
Nicholas Society of the City of New York.
She received her B.A. from Wheaton College and her M.S. from Columbia
University Graduate School of Journalism. She served for ten years on the Board of
Trustees at Deerfield Academy, and has been a juror for the Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia
University Awards, a trustee at The Buckley School in New York City, and a member of
the Editorial Advisory Board for the Columbia Journalism Review. She is currently a
member of the Advisory Board for 826DC, a nonprofit tutoring center focused on
teaching writing to inner-city students.
Sally Bedell Smith is the mother of three children and resides in Washington,
D.C. with her husband, Stephen Smith.
July 2012