Eileen Pollack

Eileen Pollack was one of the first two women to graduate from Yale University with a BS in physics; she later earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is the author of five novels, "The Professor of Immortality," "The Bible of Dirty Jokes," "A Perfect Life," and "Breaking and Entering," which was named a New York Times Editor’s Choice selection, as well as two collections of short fiction.

Pollack’s work of creative nonfiction "Woman Walking Ahead: In Search of Catherine Weldon and Sitting Bull" was recently made into a movie starring Jessica Chastain. Her investigative memoir "The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science Is Still a Boys’ Club" was published by Beacon Press in 2015; a long excerpt appeared in the New York Times Sunday Magazine and went viral, after which she spent five years working to advance the opportunities for women and people of color in STEM fields.

Her work has been selected for Best American Short Stories, Best American Essays, and Best American Travel Writing. Pollack's latest book, an essay collection titled "Maybe It's Me: On Being the Wrong Kind of Woman," was published in 2022 by Delphinium Books and received starred reviews in both Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews. A former director of the MFA Program at the University of Michigan, she is now a professor emerita and lives and writes in Boston.