Alexandra Marshall

Born in Western Pennsylvania and raised in the near suburbs of New York City, Alexandra Marshall graduated from Wheaton College in 1965 with a BA in French while studying modern dance at the New England Conservatory. The following year she studied Japanese classical dance in Kyoto, returning to New York to work at the Japanese Consulate and study Japanese at the New School. In 1966 she married her first husband, Timothy Buxton, and they moved to Stanford University, where she worked at the International Students Center. She then earned an MA in French from Columbia University Teachers College, and taught French the next year at a public junior high school in Exeter, NH. In 1970 the couple led a group of college students to Ghana, West Africa for Operation Crossroads Africa, a program that JFK called “the progenitor of the Peace Corps.” Her husband died there at age 28. In addition to her six books, Ms. Marshall has been a Film Critic for The American Prospect, a guest columnist for The Boston Globe, and her essays, feature stories, travel journalism, and opinion pieces have appeared in many literary journals, newspapers, and magazines. Alexandra Marshall is the author of five novels: The Court of Common Pleas (Houghton Mifflin, 2001), Something Borrowed (Houghton Mifflin, 1997), The Brass Bed (Doubleday, 1986), Tender Offer (Knopf, 1981), and Gus in Bronze (Knopf, 1977). She has also published a nonfiction book, Still Waters (Morrow, 1978), written in conjunction with the PBS “Nova” film of the same title.