Millicent Dillon (née Gerson; May 24, 1925 – January 27, 2025) was an American writer."Millicent (Gerson) Dillon." ''Contemporary Authors Online''. Detroit: Gale, 2014. Retrieved via ''Biography in Context'' database, 2017-06-10. She was born in New York City and studied physics at

Hunter College Hunter College is a public university in New York City, United States. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools ...

. She also worked variously at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

Standard Oil Company Standard Oil Company was a corporate trust in the petroleum industry that existed from 1882 to 1911. The origins of the trust lay in the operations of the Standard Oil Company (Ohio), which had been founded in 1870 by John D. Rockefeller. The ...

, Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft, and

Northrop Aircraft Northrop Corporation was an American aircraft manufacturer from its formation in 1939 until its 1994 merger with Grumman to form Northrop Grumman. The company is known for its development of the flying wing design, most successfully the B-2 Spiri ...

. In 1965, at the age of 40, Dillon enrolled in the creative writing program at

San Francisco State University San Francisco State University (San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a Public university, public research university in San Francisco, California, United States. It was established in 1899 as the San Francisco State Normal School and is ...

. Subsequently, she taught at

Foothill College Foothill College is a public community college in Los Altos Hills, California. It is part of the Foothill–De Anza Community College District. It was founded on January 15, 1957, and offers 84 Associate degree programs, 2 Bachelor's degree p ...

Los Altos, California Los Altos (; Spanish language, Spanish for "The Heights") is a city in Santa Clara County, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. The population was 31,625 according to the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Most of the city's growth ...

. She also worked at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

for nearly a decade. Millicent became a full-time writer in 1983. She is best known for her scholarly works on the American writers

Jane Bowles Jane Bowles (; born Jane Sydney Auer; February 22, 1917 – May 4, 1973) was an American writer and playwright. Early life Born into a Jewish family in New York City on February 22, 1917, to Sydney Auer (father) and Claire Stajer (mother), Jan ...

and

Paul Bowles Paul Frederic Bowles (; December 30, 1910November 18, 1999) was an American expatriate composer, author, and translator. He became associated with the Moroccan city of Tangier, where he settled in 1947 and lived for 52 years to the end of his ...

. These include a couple of biographies and a collection of letters, as well as ''The Viking Portable Paul and Jane Bowles'' (1994) which Dillon edited. Besides these, she also wrote short stories, novels, and plays. Her novel ''Harry Gold'' (2000) was nominated for the PEN Faulkner Award. She won five O. Henry Awards and also received a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...

.Biographical sketch
in "Millicent Dillon: An Inventory of her Papers" (

finding aid A finding aid, in the context of archival science and archival research, is an organization tool, a document containing detailed and processed metadata and other information about a specific collection of records within an archive. Finding aids ...

for an

archival An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials, in any medium, or the physical facility in which they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organ ...

collection).

Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center The Harry Ransom Center, known as the Humanities Research Center until 1983, is an archive, library, and museum at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in the collection of literary and cultural artifacts from the Americas and Europe ...

, The University of Texas at Austin. Retrieved 2017-06-10. Dillon was married to Murray Lesser and David Dillon; both marriages ended in divorce. She was the mother of the author

Wendy Lesser Wendy Lesser (born March 20, 1952) is an American critic, writer, and editor based in Berkeley, California."Wendy Lesser." ''Contemporary Authors Online''. Detroit: Gale, 2014. Retrieved via ''Biography in Context'' database, 2017-06-10. Version ...

, and one other daughter. Dillon died in

Daly City, California Daly City () is the second-most populous city in San Mateo County, California, United States. Located in the San Francisco Bay Area, and immediately south of San Francisco (sharing its northern border with almost all of San Francisco's southern ...

, on January 27, 2025, at the age of 99.

Works

Novels

* ''The One in the Back is Medea'' (1973) * ''The Dance of the Mothers'' (1991) * ''Harry Gold'' (2000) * ''A Version of Love'' (2003)

Short fiction

* ''Baby Perpetua and Other Stories'' (1971)

Non-fiction

* ''A Little Original Sin: The Life and Work of Jane Bowles'' (1980) * ''Out in the World: Selected Letters of Jane Bowles, 1935-1970'' (1985, editor) * ''After Egypt: Isadora Duncan and Mary Cassatt'' (1990) * ''The Portable Paul and Jane Bowles'' (1994, editor) * ''You Are Not I: A Portrait of Paul Bowles'' (1998)

Stories

References

External Links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Dillon, Millicent 1925 births 2025 deaths American biographers American women biographers American women novelists 20th-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American novelists 21st-century American women writers 20th-century American women writers PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction winners 21st-century American non-fiction writers Hunter College alumni San Francisco State University alumni Princeton University staff