'Prozac Nation' author Elizabeth Wurtzel dies of breast cancer aged 52, celebrities offer condolences
Elizabeth Wurtzel, who at the age of 27 published the ground-breaking memoir 'Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America', died on January 7 in Manhattan. She was 52.
According to reports quoting her childhood friend, writer David Samuels, the cause of death was metastatic breast cancer, linked to BRCA genetic mutation. Her immediate cause of death was complications from leptomeningeal disease caused by cancer spreading to the cerebrospinal fluid.
She is survived by her mother, Lynne Ellen Winters. Journalist Ronan Farrow tweeted: "I met Lizzie [Elizabeth Wurtzel] in law school. She started mid-career as I was starting young. We were both misfits and she was kind and generous and filled spaces that might have otherwise been lonely with her warmth and humor and idiosyncratic voice. She gave a lot to a lot of us. I miss her."
His mother Mia Farrow also tweeted about Wurtzel's death, saying: "Elizabeth Wurtzel, author of ‘Prozac Nation’ has died. This is so very sad. Lizzy was a classmate of Ronan at Yale Law- and soon became a friend to our family. She was brilliant, complex, fascinating, fun and kind.”
Lieutenant Governor of Washington State Cyrus Habib, one of Wurtzel’s closest friends, tweeted: "I’m devastated that my friend @LizzieWurtzel has passed away. I learned so much from her about life, music, and the absurdity of our world. She was the voice of Gen X, and for me and our friends, she made law school bearable. May God bring her home.”
Author of 'The Eggshell Skull Rule', A. S. Friedman, in a moving obituary, wrote: "[She] was one of my closest and dearest friends. She fought this disease until the very end. Just 10 days ago she told me, 'all there is to do is to move forward.' A beautiful soul. May her memory be a blessing."
Arianna Huffington also commented on the writer's legacy, saying: "RIP to Elizabeth Wurtzel, who opened a dialogue about clinical depression with her memoir 'Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America'." When 'Prozac Nation' hit the shelves in 1994, it became a cultural touchstone for shining a light on the then taboo subject of clinical depression and inspired a whole slew of "confessional" authors.
Sarah Weinman, the author of 'The Real Lolita', tweeted a link to Wurtzel’s 2018 op-ed for 'The Guardian', which she penned after being diagnosed with breast cancer with the comment: "So, so sad to hear of the early, untimely death of Elizabeth Wurtzel." In a second tweet, she added: "Cancer is hell and of course she wrote about it with utter ferocity.”
In 2015, Wurtzel had announced she had breast cancer. She had a double mastectomy, but the cancer had already metastasized to her brain. She became an advocate for BRCA testing after her diagnosis.
She was born on July 31, 1967, in Manhattan, the child of an affair between her mother, Lynne Ellen Winters, and photographer Bob Adelman, who died in 2016. On December 24, 2018, she detailed the discovery of her illegitimate birth in an article published in The Cut.
She began writing 'Prozac Nation' in 1986, while she was a student at Harvard. After the success of 'Prozac Nation', she continued interrogating herself and her cultural milieu with 'B***h: In Praise of Difficult Women', published in 1998, with a cover photograph that featured her topless and extending her middle finger.
She detailed her continuing struggle against drug addictions in 'More, Now, Again'. Wurtzel also became a graduate student at Yale Law School, graduating in 2008 and married James Freed Jr. in 2015 who she separated from in 2019.
Writing about ‘Prozac Nation’ in the book's afterword, she said: "It would be to come out and say that clinical depression is a real problem, that it ruins lives, that it ends lives, that it very nearly ended my life; that it afflicts many, many people, many very bright and worthy and thoughtful and caring people, people who could probably save the world or at the very least do it some real good, people who are too mired in despair to even begin to unleash the lifespring of potential that they likely have down deep inside.”
Despite the outcry against the "narcissistic" nature of her work, 'Prozac Nation' was made into a feature film starring Christina Ricci in 2001.