Joan Mellen


Joan Mellen was an American writer and professor of English and creative writing.

Early life and education

Mellen was born in the Bronx in 1941. Her father was a lawyer.
She completed her undergraduate degree at Hunter College in 1962. She received a doctorate in English from the City University of New York.

Career

She became a professor at Temple University in 1966, where she taught for many decades. A full professor of English and creative writing by 2004, that year she received the Great Teacher Award from the university's board of trustees.
She was the author of a number of books. Her early work in the 1970s was about film. In the following two decades, she wrote many biographies, while continuing to publish work about film.
Her 1988 biography of Bobby Knight came after John Feinstein's best-selling A Season on the Brink, and presented a more positive view of the basketball coach. Sports journalists took this as an attack on Feinstein's work, sparking heated controversy.
In 1994, Mellen published the first biography of Kay Boyle.
Striking out in a different direction, in 2005, Mellen wrote a book about the Kennedy assassination, criticizing the Warren Commission investigation. Other books on mid-century political events followed. She published a memoir in 2024.
Mellen participated in a Criterion Collection commentary track for
Seven Samurai with film scholars David Desser, Tony Rayns, Stephen Prince, and Donald Richie.

Personal life

She married James Mellen in 1966. They divorced in 1967. In 1969, she married Ralph Schoenman. They divorced 13 years later, but remained friends until he died in 2023.
Mellen died on June 30, 2025, at home in Pennington, New Jersey, at age 83.

Books

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