Gail Sheehy, a journalist who plumbed the interior lives of public figures for clues to their behavior and examined societal trends as signposts of cultural change, died on Monday at a hospital in Southampton, N.Y. She was 83. Her daughter, Maura Sheehy, said the cause was complications of pneumonia. Gail Sheehy, a lively participant in New York’s literary scene and a practitioner of creative nonfiction, studied anthropology with Margaret Mead. She was a star writer at New York magazine and later married its founder, Clay Felker, who encouraged her to write “big” stories. She wrote presciently about subjects that marked turns in the culture, including blended families and drug addiction.

Source: New York Times August 25, 2020 14:05 UTC