PERIOD DRAMA DECADES AFTER SHE FIRST BEGAN WRITING, JUDY BLUME IS AS RELEVANT AS EVER THE AUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY is a curious genre. The term makes it sound like the staid alternative to the unauthorized biography, but it’s in some ways more fraught. When a biographer is granted access to their subject, they learn things even the most thorough researcher denied those connections might miss. But they also need to stay on their subject’s good side. This might mean producing a flat- tering account, or the biography’s subject directing the manner in which a warts- and-all story gets told. An authorized biographer is neither the ghostwriter of an autobiography nor the stenographer of an as-told-to account — the biographer, not the subject, is still the sole author. But there are some dynamics in common. Now nearing 90 years of age, acclaimed youth and adult fiction writer Judy Blume is at last getting her authorized biography. Authorized and authoritative, her biographer, Mark Oppenheimer, is a high-profile American journalist: a former
42 PAGE
BY PHOEBE MALTZ BOVY
ILLUSTRATION BY CHANELLE NIBBELINK
SPRING 2026
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