Shirley Streshinsky

Shirley Streshinsky is a magazine journalist, novelist, and biographer who has been widely published in the U.S. and abroad. Her most recent book — co-authored with historian Patricia Klaus and published on September 17, 2013 — is the biography An Atomic Love Story: The Extraordinary Women in Robert Oppenheimer’s Life. Turner Publications, Nashville and New York.

Her first book, the non-fiction And I Alone Survived (,Dutton) was based on the experience of the sole survivor of a small airplane crash in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. It became a television movie. Other non-fiction books include the biography Audubon, Life and Art in the American Wilderness (Villard, New York, 1993 and University of Georgia Press 1995); and Oats! A Book of Whimsy (with Maria Streshinsky, Celestial Arts Press, Berkeley, Ca. 1996)

Along with An Atomic Love Story, Turner has re-issued the biography Audubon and four of her historical novels The Shores of Paradise, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1991; Gift of the Golden Mountain, Villard, 1988; A Time Between, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1984; Hers the Kingdom, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1981. All were published in paperback by Berkley; three were best sellers and. there were several editions in Europe

Since the 1980s, Streshinsky’s long-form journalism has been published in such magazines as Glamour, AARP The Magazine as well as American Heritage and Preservation magazines. Her travel stories have appeared in Travel & Leisure, Condé Nast Traveler, the San Francisco Examiner, and scores of others newspapers and magazines. Her travel essays have been a feature of the National Public Radio program “Savvy Traveler.”

Working with her photojournalist husband, the late Ted Streshinsky, she produced a prize-winning article on the desegregation of the Berkeley schools (for Parents’ Magazine) and she won a first place award from the National Association of Magazine Editors for her story on the court-martial of a young Navy nurse. The two collaborated on many other articles, including one on light heavyweight boxing champion Archie Moore, for the Los Angeles Times Sunday magazine. Her review of the new Ray Monk biography of Robert Oppenheimer appeared in The American Scholar’s summer 2013 issue.

Streshinsky is a graduate of the University of Illinois. She has three grown children: architect David, opera general director Mark, and journalist Maria Streshinsky, editor of Pacific Standard magazine.