Deirdre Bair

• Name — Deirdre Bair • Birth Name — Deirdre Bartolotta • Born — 21 June 1935 • Birthplace — Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US • Died — 17 April 2020 • Place of death — New Haven, Connecticut, US • Occupation — Biographer • Education — Columbia University (MA, PhD) University of Pennsylvania (BA) • Period — 1978–2019 • Awards — National Book Award (1981)

Bair was born Deirdre Bartolotta on June 21, 1935 in Pittsburgh. She grew up in nearby Monongahela, Pennsylvania. Her father was a small-business owner, her mother a homemaker. She had one sister and one brother. Bair earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of Pennsylvania in 1957. She went on to earn her Master of Arts degree (1968) and Doctor of Philosophy degree (1972), both in comparative literature, at Columbia University. She worked as a stringer for Newsweek and a reporter for the New Haven Register before earning her doctorate.

Starting in 1976, Bair served as a professor of comparative literature at the University of Pennsylvania. She resigned in 1988 to write full-time. At various times during her life, Bair served as a visiting professor, writer in residence, or distinguished scholar at Ohio State University, Bennington College, Macquarie University, Griffith University, and Australian National University. She was also a visiting lecturer at Paris VII, University of Kassel, Uppsala University, and University College Dublin. Bair was awarded fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the New York Institute for the Humanities, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (then the Bunting Institute), and the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute, among other institutions.

Bair married museum administrator Lavon Henry Bair in 1957. The couple had two children, Katney Bair and Vonn Scott Bair. She divorced her husband in 2007. Bair died of a heart attack at home in New Haven, Connecticut, on April 17, 2020. She was survived by her children and other relatives. Her ex-husband predeceased her in 2012.