Writer and poet, born in New York City, New York, USA. She studied at Barnard College (1963 BA) and Columbia University (1965 MA; School of Fine Arts 196970). She taught at a variety of institutions in New York City, and in Heidelberg, Germany, as a faculty member of the Overseas Division of the University of Maryland. She wrote volumes of poetry and novels, and achieved some celebrity with Fear of Flying: A Novel (1973), a story of sexual fantasies that some interpret as a liberating text for women. Sappho's Leap, a story based on the Greek poetess, was published in 2004.
Erica Jong (née Mann, born March 26, 1942, in New York City, New York) is an American author and educator.
Career
A 1963 graduate of Barnard College, Jong is best known for her first novel, Fear of Flying (published in 1973), which created a sensation with its frank treatment of a woman's sexual desires.
Jong wrote "Fear of Flying" in the first person, and her main character suffers from the fear of flying in more than one way, including the literal one.
Personal life
A daughter of Seymour Mann (né Samuel Weisman), a Polish Jewish musician, and his wife, the former Eda Mirsky, a painter and textile designer whose family immigrated to the United States from Russia, Jong grew up in New York City.
Jong has been married four times. Her first two marriages, to college sweetheart Michael Werthman and to Allan Jong, a Chinese-American psychiatrist, are described in Fear of Flying. Her third husband was Jonathan Fast, a novelist and social work educator, and son of the novelist, Howard Fast (this marriage was described in "How to Save Your Own Life" and "Parachutes and Kisses"). Jong is known to some for a brief liaison with publisher Andy Stewart, then the husband of Martha Stewart, an episode detailed in Jong's 2006 book "Seducing the Demon".
Jong lived briefly in Heidelberg, Germany with her second husband, while he was stationed at an army base there, an experience she chronicled in her first novel, Fear of Flying.
Views on 9/11
Jong has publicly questioned the official version of the 9/11 attacks. Kisses (1984) Shylock's Daughter (1987): formerly titled Serenissima Any Woman's Blues (1990) Inventing Memory (1997) Sappho's Leap (2003)
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