People like Anita Shreve

Anita Hale Shreve (c.1946 – March 29, 2018) was an American writer, chiefly known for her novels. One of her first published stories, Past the Island, Drifting (published in 1975), was awarded an O. Henry Prize in 1976.

Born in Boston, the eldest of three daughters, Shreve grew up in Dedham, Massachusetts. She was a member of the Dedham High School class of 1964. Her father, Richard Harold Shreve, was an airline pilot for Delta Air Lines and later a trompe l'oeil painter, while her mother, Bibiana Kennedy, was a homemaker.

Shreve graduated from Tufts University and was a member of Chi Omega.

She married Jack Christensen, her first husband, while he finished his medical degree at Harvard Medical School. She met her second husband, Clay Wescott, at Reading Memorial High School, where they were teachers. Shreve and Wescott were living in Hingham, Massachusetts, and taking part in a Wescott family project to build Alcyone, a 41-foot sailboat, which was launched in January 1973. Some of Shreve's voyages with Wescott in Alcyone became fictionalized in her later writing. Wescott and Shreve married in 1975, and went to Kenya together, where Wescott got a job with the Harvard Institute for International Development while finishing his PhD. In 1978, Wescott and Shreve split up and returned to the USA.