Sue Kaufman was born in 1926 in New York, where she lived until her death in 1977. She graduated from Vassar College in 1947 and began contributing to publications such as The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review and The Saturday Evening Post. Her first novel, The Happy Summer Days, appeared in 1959, but the greatest success of her entire career came in 1967 with the publication of the novel Diary of a Deranged Housewife, which was adapted to film in 1970. by Eleanor and Frank Perry. Other works by the author are: Green Holly (1961), The Headshrinker's Test (1969), Falling Bodies (1974) and The Master and Other Stories (1976). Since 1980, the North American Academy of Arts and Letters has held the Sue Kaufman Prize for Fiction in her memory.