Born 26 March 1942 · American novelist, poet and satirist
Erica Mann Jong is an American novelist, satirist, poet and teacher, born in New York City on 26 March 1942. Her 1973 debut Fear of Flying was famously controversial for its frank treatment of female sexual desire, figured prominently in second-wave feminism, and has sold tens of millions of copies. She opened its first chapter with this joke as an epigraph — and credited it to “Anonymous (a woman),” which is precisely the line the internet later deleted in order to hand her the credit.