Erica Jong

Erica Jong, born Erica Mann on March 26, 1942, in Manhattan, is an American novelist, satirist, and poet best known for bringing a frank, comic, and literary voice to questions of sex, womanhood, and freedom. She came of age in New York in a Jewish family with deep ties to art and commerce. Her father, Seymour Mann, was a businessman of Polish-Jewish ancestry whose gifts and home accessories company became known for mass-produced porcelain dolls. Her mother, Eda Mirsky, was born in England to a Russian-Jewish immigrant family and worked as a painter, textile designer, and doll designer for the family company.

Jong’s education placed her early inside the worlds of art, literature, and performance. She attended the High School of Music & Art in Harlem in the 1950s, where she developed her passion for art and writing. At Barnard College, she edited the Barnard Literary Magazine and created poetry programs for WKCR, Columbia University’s radio station. She graduated from Barnard in 1963 and earned an MA in 18th century English Literature from Columbia University in 1965. Her master’s thesis examined representations of women in the poetry of Alexander Pope, a subject that points toward the concerns that would later define much of her fiction.

Her first novel, Fear of Flying, published in 1973, made her famous and controversial. Through the character Isadora Wing, a woman in her late twenties searching for who she is and where she is going, Jong wrote openly about female sexual desire, identity, relationships, and the wish for freedom and purpose. The novel used humor, psychology, cultural references, literary references, and candid writing about sex. It spoke directly to conflicts facing women in late 1960s and early 1970s America, and it figured prominently in the development of second-wave feminism.

Fear of Flying also became a major commercial success. In 2013, The Washington Post reported that it had sold more than 20 million copies worldwide; by 2022, The New York Times reported that worldwide sales had risen to more than 37 million. Jong continued Isadora Wing’s story in How to Save Your Own Life in 1977 and Parachutes and Kisses in 1984. Her life also entered her fiction: her marriage to novelist and educator Jonathan Fast was described in those two later novels.

Jong’s personal life crossed several countries and literary circles. She lived on an army base in Heidelberg, West Germany, from 1966 to 1969 with her second husband, Allan Jong, whose surname she kept after their divorce. She was a frequent visitor to Venice and wrote about the city in Shylock’s Daughter. She lived for many years on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and in 2007 her literary archive was acquired by Columbia University. Later in life, she supported same-sex marriage, writing in 2008 that it promoted stability and family and was good for children. In the early 2020s, she was diagnosed with dementia, and as of 2025 she lives in a nursing home in Manhattan.

Jong’s work continues to matter because it named subjects that many readers recognized but had not often seen treated with such directness in fiction. Her best-known book joined satire, literary intelligence, and sexual candor at a moment when women were openly questioning inherited roles. For a quotes website, her appeal lies in that mix: sharpness, humor, and a plain refusal to make women’s inner lives smaller than they are.