Author Gail Sheehy Selected as Commencement Speaker

Best-selling author and cultural observer Gail Sheehy will deliver the main address at Ithaca College’s 106th Commencement on Saturday, May 19. Sheehy is best known for her 1976 book, Passages, which remained on the New York Times best-seller list for more than three years and was named in a Library of Congress survey as one of the 10 most influential books of our time.

"Passages was one of the first books to explore in a serious way the life transitions that come with age," says Ithaca College president Peggy R. Williams. "It was widely read and discussed at the time, and it remains for many the definitive word on the stages of adulthood."

"As we prepare to make our own passage to the next stage in life, it is appropriate that the author of Passages will speak to the graduating class," says senior class president Meg Booze. "Gail Sheehy’s books have changed the way people look at themselves and understand the transitional periods in their lives, and I’m excited to hear what she has to say to us as the next generation of leaders."

Sheehy has revisited the stages of adulthood in such best-sellers as New Passages: Mapping Your Life across Time (1995) and Understanding Men’s Passages: Discovering the New Map of Men’s Lives (1998). In The Silent Passage: Menopause (1991) she broke the taboo surrounding menopause and opened a national dialogue on the subject.

As a political journalist and contributing editor to Vanity Fair, Sheehy has written character studies of such leaders as Bill and Hillary Clinton, Bob and Elizabeth Dole, Mikhail Gorbachev, Jesse Jackson, Newt Gingrich, and Margaret Thatcher. Her 1999 biography, Hillary’s Choice, not only explored the life of one of the nation’s most intriguing women but also raised fundamental questions for every woman juggling career, family, and personal ambition. During last fall’s presidential campaign, Sheehy created a stir by suggesting in an article that George W. Bush was dyslexic and had attention-deficit disorder.

Among other honors, Sheehy has won the National Magazine Award, Washington Journalism Review Award as best magazine writer in America, Headliner Award from the Association for Women in Communications, and Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Race Relations. She is a six-time recipient of the New York Newswomen’s Club Front Page Award for distinguished journalism. Sheehy was a founder of the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children and is a member of the Women’s Forum of New York. A graduate of the University of Vermont, she received a fellowship at Columbia University to study under the anthropologist Margaret Mead, who became her mentor.