Judith Thurman has been contributing to The New Yorker since 1987, and since 2000, as a Staff Writer specializing in profiles and cultural criticism. She is the author of “Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller,” which won the 1983 National Book Award for Non-Fiction, and served as the basis for Sydney Pollack’s Oscar-winning film, Out of Africa. Her second biography, “Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette,” won the Los Angeles Times and the Salon Book Awards for Biography. She is also the author of “Cleopatra’s Nose: 39 Varieties of Desire,” a collection of her essays. Thurman won the Harold G. Vursell Award for prose style, from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; the Rungstedlund Prize from the Danish Royal Academy; and Bard College’s Mary McCarthy Award for a woman writer’s life work. She is also a chevalier of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.