She’s spoken openly of her demons with writing and her chronic self-doubt. The true star of Erica’s writing is courage. These awards include: The Fernanda Pivano award in Italy, The Sigmund Freud Award in Italy, the Deauville Award in France and The United Nations Award for excellence in literature. Comfortable and eloquent in various genres, she has switched between fiction, non-fiction and poetry almost effortlessly, becoming one of the most evocative poets of her generation with 7 published volumes, and winning Poetry magazine’s respected Bess Hokin Prize.Įrica has won many awards for poetry and fiction all over the world.

In the four decades since Fear of Flying, she’s published over 25 books in 43 languages, including 9 works of fiction as well as celebrated non-fiction volumes such as What Do Women Want, Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life, an anthology on – well, sex – called Sugar in My Bowl: Real Women Write About Real Sex that she edited, and in 2012, a Kindle Single, A Letter to the President, which bravely takes on the issues facing American women today. It’s not the sex itself but the fact that she quietly flouted the unspoken norms of the day to talk about it unblinkingly – neither voyeur, nor prude – that made her a pillar of the sexual revolution and a hero to millions, as well as gaining her the admiration of writers like John Updike, Henry Miller, Anthony Burgess and Jennifer Weiner. Sex and sexuality, while being at the core of most of Jong’s writing, is almost incidental to what makes her one of the world’s most iconic writers. In Isadora Wing, her fictional doppelganger, Erica created every woman – not as she existed in public life in the 70s, but inside a woman’s own mind.

Her novel articulated what women thought but which, through decades of silent complicity with the status quo, was never voiced. Fear of Flying, Erica Jong’s first and most famous novel published in 1973, blew conventional thinking about women, marriage and sexuality out of the water, selling over 27 million copies and being translated into over 40 languages.

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