Beesley, Amanda 1967-

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BEESLEY, Amanda 1967-

PERSONAL: Born September 23, 1967; married Nicky Weinstock (a writer and editor), 1997; children: Savannah. Education: Barnard College, graduated 1989.

ADDRESSES: Home—New York, NY. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Anchor Books, Random House, Inc., 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.

CAREER: Writer. ICM Literary Agency, agent; Self magazine, columnist. Also taught writing at State University of New York, Purchase.

WRITINGS:

Something New: Reflections on the Beginnings of a Marriage, Doubleday (New York, NY), 2000.

Also author of one-act play The Stolen Child, produced at New York's Tiffany Theater in 2002. Contributor to It's Bridge, Baby: How to Be a Player in Ten Easy Lessons, by Jeff Bayone, Riverhead Books (New York, NY), 1998. Beesley's articles have appeared in Self, Nerve, Swing, and Ladies' Home Journal, among other publications.

SIDELIGHTS: Amanda 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, a graduate of Barnard College who studied playwriting with Jules Feiffer as well as acting, 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," according to Booklist's Vanessa Bush. Katharine Whitte-more, 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 2001-02, the play was called "quietly riveting" by Bruce Weber in the New York Times. For Weber, the "issue at the heart of [the couple's] story is their guilt." Writing in Daily Variety, Steven Oxman also noted that the play "relates an event that challenges [the couple] to the core."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Art, June 20, 2001, Bruce Weber, review of The StolenChild, p. 1E.

Booklist, December 15, 1999, Vanessa Bush, review of Something New: Reflections on the Beginnings of a Marriage, p. 740.

Daily Variety, January 28, 2002, Steven Oxman, review of The Stolen Child, pp. 4-5.

Entertainment Weekly, March 3, 2000, Clarissa Cruz, review of Something New, pp. 68-69.

Hollywood Reporter, January 30, 2002, Madeleine Shaner, review of The Stolen Child, pp. 8-9.

Library Journal, January, 2000, Kay L. Brodie, review of Something New, p. 136.

New York Times, September 14, 1997, Lois Smith Brady, "Weddings: Vows—Amanda Beesley, Nicholas Weinstock"; June 20, 2001, Bruce Weber, "Five One-Acts Depicting the Lives of the Entitled," p. E1.

New York Times Book Review, August 13, 2000, Katharine Whittemore, review of Something New, p. 15.

Publishers Weekly, November 29, 1999, review of Something New, p. 60.