Screenwriter & Bestselling Author
Delia Ephron: Biography at a Glance
- Bestselling Author and Screenwriter Delia Ephron began her writing career when she published a 500-word humorist essay in The New York Times Magazine entitled “How to Eat Like a Child.” The piece would become a bestselling book, television special, and musical revue.
- Known for her amusing and thoughtful writing style, Ephron brings to the stage her hilarious and poignant spin on life’s absurdities and obsessions, relationships, and hardships.
- With 14 published books, Ephron will also discuss the creative process, from channeling life's hardships to the key to successful collaborations.
- In 2022, Ephron returned with a new and highly anticipated book, Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life which tells her own late-in-life love story, complete with a tragic second act and joyous resolution.
Media
Biography
Bestselling Author and Screenwriter Delia Ephron began her writing career when she published a 500-word humorist essay in The New York Times Magazine entitled “How to Eat Like a Child.” The piece would become a bestselling book, television special, and musical revue. Known for her amusing and thoughtful writing style, Ephron brings to the stage her hilarious and poignant spin on life’s absurdities and obsessions, relationships, and hardships. With 14 published books, Ephron will also discuss the creative process, from channeling life's hardships to the key to successful collaborations. In 2022, Ephron returns with a new and highly anticipated book, Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life which tells her own late-in-life love story, complete with a tragic second act and joyous resolution.
Her novel, Siracusa, was a New York Times bestseller and named a Staff Pick by Publishers Weekly. Emotive and witty, Siracusa tells the story of two strained marriages put to the test while vacationing in a Sicilian coast town. “This is literature that keeps the pages turning,” wrote Publishers Weekly. “Ephron's bringing together her beautifully developed characters and placing them out of their comfort zone, adding drama from the past mixed with the drama of the present and never losing a sense of humor makes for a wonderful book.” Named one of the ten best books of 2016 by People and one of Vulture’s 100 greatest beach books ever, Siracusa is available as an audiobook featuring John Slattery and will be adapted into a feature film written by Ephron and directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon of the Sundance-hit Me and Earl and the Dying Girl.
With her sister Nora, Delia produced and co-wrote You’ve Got Mail and Hanging Up. She was also a co-screenwriter on The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and an associate producer on Sleepless in Seattle. For the first time since You’ve Got Mail, Delia is reteaming with Meg Ryan, who will direct The Book, based on a story by Ephron.
In 2008, Delia and Nora adapted Love, Loss and What I Wore for the stage, running off-Broadway for over two-and-a-half years and winning a Drama Desk Award. The Ephron sisters expanded the book into a collection of stories and monologues about relationships, clothes, and memory.
Delia’s book of essays, Sister Mother Husband Dog (etc.), is a stark yet humorous reflection on the death of her sister, her favorite bakeries, her journey to becoming a writer, her parent’s alcoholism, and her unabashed love for her dog.
Topics
The Patient Experience
After experiencing and overcoming the loss of her husband and sister, the bestselling author Delia Ephron received her own dire medical diagnosis – acute myeloid leukemia (AML), an aggressive form of cancer, and just a few months after falling in love with Peter, a Jungian psychiatrist. Her whirlwind story of second chances, in life and love, and against all odds, is the basis of her upcoming book, Left on Tenth, and will be released in April 2022.
In this engagement, Delia draws audiences into the emotional highs and lows of surviving a bone marrow transplant, her experience with doctors, hospitals, medicine, and friendship while fighting for a second chance at love.
Delia Ephron on Life and Change
Nothing is constant. Everything in life is always in flux: what we want, what we dream of, what makes us happy, what makes us unhappy. This talk is about change. Change you want to make, change you are forced to make, change you’re scared to make, and all the ways our childhoods make it easier or harder for us to adapt. Drawing from her own life and professional experience, Delia Ephron talks about the times in her life when she has had to change direction. This talk — which can be crafted in various ways to suit the audience’s needs — mines Ephron’s talent for both the serious and the funny.
The Human Heart: Secrets, Intrigues, and Relationships
Delia Ephron on Creativity and Collaboration
The ability to collaborate is one of the most important life skills. Ephron would argue it is the most important, since we need to collaborate in our careers as well as in friendship, marriage, and parenting. Our professional and personal lives can be enriched by understanding nature of collaboration. In her most recent book, Sister Mother Husband Dog (etc.), Delia Ephron writes extensively about collaboration. Drawing off twenty years collaborating in the movie business as well as in theater, and as a writer and producer, Delia Ephron talks about collaboration: when it works, when it doesn’t, how it can go on the rocks, and how to make yourself a better collaborator.