In 1921 wealthy young Americans Gerald and Sara Murphy moved first to England and then to Paris with their three young children, in order to escape the stifling restrictions imposed upon them by their families and the social milieu in which they lived. She lives in New York City, and is a past fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation, the NYU Center for Ballet and the Arts, and the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. Her journalism and criticism have appeared in such publications as The American Scholar, Architectural Digest, ArtNews, Ballet Review, Esquire, New York Magazine, Town & Country, and The Washington Post.

Boyle, Joan Silber, Roxana Robinson, and Angela Carter. Vaill has also worked in the non-profit world, as executive director of the House of SpeakEasy Foundation, and in book publishing, where her authors included Iris Murdoch, Ingmar Bergman, Blanche Cook, T.C. She is currently developing a television series about the Schuyler sisters for TriStar. Her screenplay for the feature-length PBS documentary Jerome Robbins: Something to Dance About received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Writing for Nonfiction Programming, and the film won an Emmy, a CINE Golden Eagle, and the George Foster Peabody Award. She is also co-author of Seaman Schepps: A Century of New York Jewelry Design, an illustrated study of the work of her designer grandfather, and has edited or contributed to a number of other books in the field of arts and culture. She is the author of Hotel Florida: Truth, Love, and Death in the Spanish Civil War Somewhere: The Life of Jerome Robbins and the bestselling Everybody Was So Young: Gerald and Sara Murphy – A Lost Generation Love Story, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award in biography. AMANDA VAILL has just completed Jerome Robbins, By Himself, a selection of the letters, journals, and other writings of the legendary choreographer-director, and she is currently at work on a biography of the Schuyler sisters, Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton and Angelica Schuyler Church.

Everybody Was So Young by Amanda Vaill