Jean Stein, American author and editor, Died at 83

  Writer

Jean Stein was born in 1934 and died on April 30, 2017.

She was an American author and editor.

She was born to a Jewish family circa in Los Angeles, California.

Jean father was Jules C. Stein (1896–1981), founder of the Music Corporation of America (MCA) and the Jules Stein Eye Institute at University of California, Los Angeles.

Jean Stein’s mother, Doris J. Stein (1902–1984), established the Doris Jones Stein Foundation.

Her sister, Susan Shiva, died of breast cancer (1983), as did Doris Stein.

She was educated at the Katharine Branson School in Ross, California, then at Brillantmont International School in Lausanne, Switzerland, after which she graduated from Miss Hewitt’s Classes in New York City.

Then, Stein spent two years at Wellesley College and then attended classes at the University of Paris (formerly known as the Sorbonne).

After she when to Paris she interviewed William Faulkner, with whom she had an affair, and, according to the historian Joel Williamson, offered the interview to the The Paris Review in exchange for being made an editor there.

Her first marriage in 1958 was to William vanden Heuvel, a lawyer who served in the U.S. Justice Department under Robert F. Kennedy, and who later also became a diplomat and author.

As of 1984, she has been the chairman of the Roosevelt Institute.

The couple’s was first daughter, Katrina vanden Heuvel, was born in 1959; Stein was now the editor and publisher of The Nation magazine.

They had a second daughter, Wendy vanden Heuvel, was born in 1961, and she is an actress and producer in New York.

Stein is also on the board of the 52nd Street Project, which matches inner-city youth with professional theater artists to create original dramatic works.

She was married to Torsten Wiesel, from 1995 to 2007, a co-recipient with David H. Hubel of the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

She apparently committed suicide by jumping.

Jean Stein passed away at 83 years old.