Ruth Frankel Boorstin
Born: December 16, 1917 in Morenci, Arizona
Died: December 1, 2013 in Encino, California Pen Name: Ruth F Boorstin Connection to Illinois: Boorstin earned an MA at the University of Chicago in the psychology of reading. For fifteen years she ran a creative writing feature for children in Chicago area newspapers. Biography: Ruth Frankel Boorstin was the stalwart collaborator with and editor of her late husband, former librarian of Congress and prize-winning historian Daniel J. Boorstin. Mrs. Boorstin was a published poet and for decades a prominent member of Washington society. Among other civic engagements, Mrs. Boorstin served on the Corcoran Gallery of Art’s board of trustees, the Smithsonian Institution’s women’s board and the advisory board of the Reading Is Fundamental literacy organization. She grew up in New York and in 1938 received a bachelor’s degree in economics from Wellesley College in Massachusetts. Three years later, she met and married her husband. Mrs. Boorstin reviewed books for the New York Times and other newspapers in the 1940s. In the 1950s and ’60s, during her husband’s teaching career at the University of Chicago, she created and edited a syndicated newspaper column featuring children’s creative writing. In 1964, she received a master’s degree in the social sciences from the University of Chicago. Before settling in Washington, she accompanied her husband on academic posts in Italy, France, Puerto Rico and Japan. They lived for several decades in Cleveland Park and had a second home, called Mount Vernon View, in Accokeek, Md. In addition to her editorial work, Mrs. Boorstin was credited with helping her husband create the Center for the Book, an initiative established by the Library of Congress to promote books and literacy around the country.
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Selected Titles
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Love is Not Because ISBN: 1883477247 OCLC: 39887494 Lone Oak Press Rochester, MN : 1998 Collected/selected poems of Ruth Frankel Boorstin. "Ruth Boorstin is a lady of parts... her verses are deft, deceptively light, and full of sense." Herman Wouk "Ruth Boorstin floats so lightly she never touches ground. She does, however, touch the mind and heart." Ray Bradbury "I think that I shall never see a book of poems so lovely." Christopher Buckley |