Amanda Beesley

Background

Beesley was born on September 23, 1967, in the United States.

Education

Beesley graduated from Barnard College in 1989. She studied playwriting with Jules Feiffer as well as acting.

Career

Beesley writes about domestic situations in her fiction and nonfiction. Her one-act play The Stolen Child relates the less-than-harmonious adventures of a couple who spent their honeymoon in Africa, while her book Something New: Reflections on the Beginnings of a Marriage chronicles Beesley's preparations for her marriage in 1997 set against the background of her mother being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

Beesley worked as a literary agent before going into writing. She contributed to Jeff Bayone's It's Bridge, Baby: How to Be a Player in Ten Easy Lessons, a book that helps players to visualize and memorize. As a columnist for Self magazine, she began contributing columns on her impending marriage to Nicky Weinstock that documented major events from their engagement to their first anniversary. In these columns, Beesley records humorous events - how the engagement ring did not fit, and the horrors of her search for the perfect wedding dress - along with the much more serious development of the news that her mother had Alzheimer's disease. Then, with the great event of the wedding past, the newlyweds settled into their new life, moving from New York City to the country, and started to plan for their future. Life in the country was not entirely blissful, but Beesley was bolstered by watching her father take care of her mother with devotion and love.

She collected these columns, adding more background information, for the 2000 book Something New, "no starry-eyed diary of pre- and post-nuptial bliss." Katharine Whittemore, writing in the New York Times Book Review, commented that the book "is less chirpy than it might have been." Whittemore went on to note that though the work "has its charms, there are minor irritations," noting that some of the characters are less than lifelike. However, Kay L. Brodie, reviewing the book in Library Journal, called it a "delightful journey through the engagement, wedding, and first year of marriage of the author," and a contributor for Publishers Weekly similarly found the book "poignant, heartfelt, and often funny," and a "perfect book for brides-to-be." Writing in Entertainment Weekly, Clarissa Cruz concluded that Something New "is a marriage memoir whose frothiness is balanced with bittersweet reality."

With The Stolen Child, Beesley turned to drama in a duologue about a disastrous African honeymoon, during which a village child dies of influenza originating from the newly married woman. Produced in New York in 2001-2002, the play was called "quietly riveting" by Bruce Weber in the New York Times.

Achievements

• Beesley is best known as a writer. Her best-recognized work is Something New: Reflections on the Beginnings of a Marriage. Her articles have appeared in Self, Nerve, Swing, and Ladies' Home Journal, among other publications.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Something New: Reflections on the Beginnings of a Marriage

    (A funny and heartfelt take on what getting married is all...)

    2000

Connections

Beesley married Nicky Weinstock, a writer, and editor, in 1997. The couple has a daughter, Savannah.

Spouse:

Nicky Weinstock

Daughter:

Savannah Beesley

References

• Contemporary Authors Volume 221
  2004