ERICA JONG

If you don't risk anything, then you risk even more

Erica Jong, poet, novelist and essayist, is best known for her six best-selling novels, Fear of Flying (12 1/2 million copies in print), How to Save Your Own Life, Fanny: Being the True History of the Adventures of Fanny Hackabout-Jones, Parachutes & Kisses, Shylock 's Daughter (formerly published as Serenissima) and Any Woman 's Blues. 

What is less well known is that Ms. Jong began her literary life as a poet and has published six award-winning collections of poetry -- Fruits and Vegetables, Half-Lives, Loveroot, At the Edge of the Body, Ordinary Miracles, and Becoming Light: Poems New and Selected. She has been awarded the prestigious Bess Hokin Prize of Poetry (also won by Sylvia Plath), the Borestone Mountain Award for Poetry, and many others. In 1981, she published Witches, a perennial back-list favorite, which tells the story of the witch in prose and poetry. Megan 's Two Houses, her first children's book, a story to help parents and children deal with divorce, is just out from Dove Kids. 

In 1993, The Devil at Large: Erica Jong on Henry Miller (Random House and Grove Press), appeared. It is a memoir about Jong's friendship with the author of Tropic of Cancer and a study of his impact on contemporary literature. 

Erica Jong's work is translated into twenty-seven languages and has been awarded the Premio Internationale Sigmund Freud in Italy and the United Nations Award of Excellence. Barnard College named her its Woman of Achievement in 1987. She served as President of the Authors Guild of the U. S. from 1991 to 1993. Known for her commitment to women's rights, authors' rights and free expression, Ms. Jong is a frequent lecturer in the U. S and abroad. 

Ms. Jong's Fear of Fifty (HarperCollinsPublishers ), a blistering, funny mid-life memoir which has been a major worldwide bestseller, was published in 1994. Ms. Jong has just completed her latest book, Inventing Memory: A Novel of Mothers and Daughters. A four- generational story told from the point of view of four women whose lives span the twentieth century, it is due to be published in July, 1997 by HarperCollinsPublishers.