Brooke Kroeger

It was baffling that a life of as much purpose and accomplishment as Nellie Bly's, still daunting, even by the contemporary standard, did not incite the passions of any number of serious authors over the years. Even if none of the more commercially successful biographers sensed the essential universality of Bly's dynamic story, at least it should have snared the imagination of a feminist scholar or two, a doctoral candidate perhaps. This book was written to fill that void. Since its publication, Bly at last has gotten her due. She has been admitted to the Women's Hall of Fame and has her own U.S. postage stamp among four that honor the women of American journalism. She has been featured in a Public Television documentary for THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE and been the subject of a Newspapers In Education series. She even made an episode of “The West Wing.”

Brooke Kroeger is an associate professor of journalism at New York University. A former foreign correspondent and editor, she has worked in every print medium. At NEWSDAY, she served as UN Correspondent and as a deputy metropolitan editor for NEW YORK NEWSDAY. This followed an eight-year stint overseas in the Scripps Howard days of United Press International with postings in Brussels, London and Tel Aviv. She was Tel Aviv bureau chief for three years before returning to London to serve as the agency's chief editor for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. She started with the wire service in its Chicago bureau, and over the course of four years, wrote about everything from local and state politics to sports.

Over the years, her freelanced work has appeared in numerous women's magazines as well as in THE NEW YORK TIMES, NEWSDAY, and THE LOS ANGELES TIMES.

NELLIE BLY, Kroeger's first book, was published in 1994. A second biography, FANNIE: The Talent for Success of Writer Fannie Hurst, was published in 1999. Her third book (2003) is entitled PASSING: When People Can't Be Who They Are.

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