Marge Piercy

Marge Piercy (born March 31, 1936) is an American poet, novelist, and social activist. Piercy is the author of Woman on the Edge of Time, He, She and It, which won the 1993 Arthur C. Clarke Award, and Gone to Soldiers, a New York Times Best Seller and sweeping historical novel set during World War II.

Life

Piercy was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Bert (Bunnin) Piercy and Robert Piercy. Upon graduation from Mackenzie High School, Marge became the first in her family to attend college, studying at the University of Michigan. Winning a Hopwood Award for Poetry and Fiction (1957) enabled her to finish college and spend some time in France. She earned a M.A. from Northwestern University. Her first book of poems, Breaking Camp, was published in 1968.

An indifferent student in her early years, Piercy developed a love of books when she came down with rheumatic fever in her mid-childhood and could do little but read. "It taught me that there's a different world there, that there were all these horizons that were quite different from what I could see".