It’s quite possibly the birthday of Jennifer Egan (b. 1962—sources vary as to whether she was born on the 6th or 7th), whose 2010 novel, A Visit from the Good Squad, won the Pulitzer, and who may be the greatest living writer ever to receive a marriage proposal from Steve Jobs.

Egan was born in Chicago but moved to San Francisco with her mother and stepfather at age seven; her parents had divorced when she was two. Her father had an alcohol problem, and Egan herself did a lot of drinking and drugs as a teenager and later considered herself lucky to have dodged her father’s addiction gene. (He eventually achieved sobriety for several years before he was hit and killed by a car in his fifties.) Egan took a gap year before college and participated in an archaeological dig, found it boring and ditched the idea of becoming an archaeologist, and then did some modeling to earn money to go to Europe. During her time in Europe she began experiencing panic attacks, mistaking them for LSD flashbacks, and started a diary, and that’s how she decided to become a writer.

Egan studied at the University of Pennsylvania. It was during her college years that she dated Steve Jobs for about a year; he was already Rich and Famous and evidently liked the fact that she didn’t initially know who he was. She claims that he knew she would turn him down when he proposed. (Years later, not long before his death, they reconnected and he attended a reading of hers in Palo Alto.) Egan then went to grad school at St. John’s College in Cambridge, England, after which she moved to New York City and supported herself with various jobs while writing.

Egan’s first novel, The Invisible Circus (1995), was about a young woman retracing her sister’s steps through Europe in an effort to understand that sister’s suicide; the book was made into a movie in 2001 starring Cameron Diaz. (Egan’s beloved half brother in real life killed himself in 2016 after years of dealing with mental illness.) A collection of short stories, Emerald City, followed in 1996, and Egan’s 2001 novel Look at Me became a National Book Award finalist; the novel is about a model who’s in an accident and has to undergo reconstructive surgery. Then came The Keep (2006), considered a gothic mystery, and A Visit from the Goon Squad, which tells the stories of several characters over several decades, including a record executive, his kleptomaniac assistant Sasha, and others. (It’s amazing! Run right out and read it! Sasha in particular is this beautiful character and the whole novel is quirky and clever and moving and funny and kind of mind-blowing.) Egan was researching her latest novel, Manhattan Beach (2017), a thriller set in 1940s New York City, when she wrote Goon Squad almost as an escape.

Egan lives with her husband, who’s a theatre director, and two sons in New York City. Read an interesting interview with Egan here.

Have a splendid Thursday, read something mind-blowing, and stay scrupulously honest to the data.