Cross, Amanda

Carolyn Gold Heilbrun was a successful American academic, feminist and author of a series of mystery novels published under the pen name Amanda Cross, which came to have a major influence on future women crime writers. She was born to a Jewish family in East Orange, New Jersey. The family moved to Manhattan in 1923 where Gold attended Birch Wathen School. She enrolled at Columbia University, New York, in 1943 and graduated with a BA in English literature in 1947. In 1945, she married the renowned economist James Heilbrun. They had three children together.