Elizabeth Wurtzel, journalist and author of Prozac Nation, dead at 52
Author of bestselling memoir about clinical depression, which made her ‘a hashtag before there was Twitter’, died from metastatic breast cancer
Elizabeth Wurtzel, the journalist and author who chronicled her life with depression in the bestselling memoir Prozac Nation, has died at the age of 52.
Writer David Samuels, Wurtzel’s friend since childhood, told the New York Times that Wurtzel had died in New York from metastatic breast cancer on Tuesday. Wurtzel, who tested positively for the BRCA genetic mutation, was an vocal advocate for BRCA testing in her journalism, while refusing pity for herself. Writing in the Guardian in 2018, she noted: “I hate it when people say that they are sorry about my cancer. Really? Have they met me? I am not someone that you feel sorry for. I am the original mean girl. I now have stage-four upgrade privileges. I can go right to the front. But it’s always been like this. I am a line-cutter. Which is to say, I was precocious. I was early for history.”