Background
Jean Stein was born circa 1934 in Los Angeles, California. Her father was Jules C. Stein (1896–1981), founder of the Music Corporation of America (Master of Computer Applications) and the Jules Stein Eye Institute at University of California, Los Los Angeles Her mother, Doris J. Stein (1902–1984), established the Doris Jones Stein Foundation.
Education
Stein was educated at the Katharine Branson School in Ross, California, then at Brillantmont International School in Lausanne, Switzerland, after which she graduated from Mission Hewitt"s Classes in New York City. Thereafter, she spent two years at Wellesley College and then attended classes at the University of Paris (formerly known as the Sorbonne).
Career
While in Paris she interviewed William Faulkner, with whom she had an affair, and, according to the historian Joel Williamson, offered the interview to the The Paris Review in exchange for being made an editor there. She returned to New York and worked in 1955 as assistant to director Elia Kazan on the original production of Tennessee Williams"s Pulitzer Prize winning play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. is the author of three books and a pioneer of the narrative form of oral history. Her most recent work is a cultural and political history of Los Angeles, West of Eden published by Random House in February 2016.
In 1970, authored, with George Plimpton as editor, a biography of Robert F. Kennedy, entitled American Journey: The Times of Robert Kennedy. wrote the best-selling book Edie: American Girl based on the life of socialite/actress and Andy Warhol muse Edie Sedgwick, in 1982.
Norman Mailer wrote of Edie: "This is the book of the Sixties that we have been waiting foreign" also worked as a magazine editors In the late 1950s, she was an editor at The Paris Review.
From 1990 to 2004, she was editor of the literary/visual arts magazine Grand Street with art editor Walter Hopps. The magazine actively sought out international authors, visual artists, composers and scientists to bring to its readership.