MacKenzie Bezos: novelist and shareholder of Amazon

Copyright of the image
Getty Images

MacKenzie Bezos, 48, made the headlines this week by announcing that she was joining Giving Pledge – donating half of her wealth to a charity.

The American novelist, who owns 4% of the capital of online retail giant Amazon, is worth at least $ 35.6 billion, making her the third richest woman in the world.

Unlike her former husband, Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, Michael Bezos is an extremely private person.

She rarely gives interviews and has generally sought to stay out of the scene – her Twitter account has only one tweet.

So, what do we know about her?

Ms. Bezos, born MacKenzie Tuttle, said she wanted to become a writer from an early age.

"I wrote my first book at the age of six … every day after school, I wrote a little bit and at the end of the year, I had a 142-page book called "The Book Worm," she said in an interview. with television reporter Charlie Rose in 2013.

This love of writing stayed with her – having attended Hotchkiss School in Connecticut, she studied English and Creative Writing at Princeton University.

• MacKenzie Bezos will give half of his fortune
• Is "great philanthropy" a charade?

Ms. Bezos said she made a specific request to Princeton to study with Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, who eventually became his PhD supervisor and an important advocate for his work.

In addition to calling her "one of the best students in my creative writing clbad," Morrison introduced her to her literary agent, Amanda Urban.

& # 39; Love at first listen & # 39;

However – as many authors have found – writing the first novel has been a long and difficult process, involving several detours.

After graduating with honors in 1992, Ms. Bezos went to New York.

She told Charlie Rose that she had the intention "to wait for the tables and … to use my overtime to write my book".

However, she struggled – both to progress with her book and financially.

To pay the bills, she eventually applied for a job in the D E Shaw hedge fund – where she was interviewed by Jeff Bezos.

While he was offering her a job, she ended up working in another department – but her office was next to hers.

"Through the walls, I heard her laugh at that gigantic laugh … it was a real love at first," she says.

She told Vogue Magazine that she was suing him by suggesting that they were having lunch – after three months of dating, they got engaged and got married shortly afterwards.

A year later, Mr. Bezos had the idea of ​​Amazon – what he called "this crazy thing that probably would not work".

In the general opinion, Ms Bezos was a key part of the business creation: he drove Mr. Bezos to Seattle while he was working on the business plan and became the first accountant of the company.

In the years that followed, Amazon took flight and the couple became a father of four children.

Ms. Bezos' ambitions in novel writing finally materialized and her first book, The Testing of Luther Albright, was published in 2005.

& # 39; Literary references & # 39;

She says that the book took him "eight years of daily work" and a good amount of tears to complete.

In words that many writers can undoubtedly understand, she told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: "Fear and shame have made me want to finish." Aspiring novelist "is not a job title that does a lot for your ego."

His first reading took place at the Elliot Bay Book Company – an independent bookstore with a café that Mr. Bezos had also used for early-morning business meetings.

Ms. Bezos said that, as a self-proclaimed introvert, she "had that feeling of fright before a shooting squad" before her first reading.

However, Rick Simonson, a senior buyer of the bookstore, recalls that Ms. Bezos had "done well" and presented herself as "well done".

Reading, like many book launches, has not been followed with much enthusiasm and warmth, "he told the BBC.

Copyright of the image
Elliott Bay Book Company

In the end, while his first novel, on a father and an emotionally repressed civil engineer, was not on the list of bestsellers, he was praised by many critics.

A New York Times critic called it "silent absorption" though with "heavy symbolism," while the Los Angeles Times termed Ms. Bezos "a gentle writer and terrifying ".

The book was selected for the Washington State Book Award and also won a prize from the Before Columbus Foundation.

She has also earned the respect of many in the Seattle literary scene.

"I had the impression that she was serious in her work … I admired the fact that she was holding it, given all that she had to be done, "Mary Ann Gwinn, editor of the Seattle Times at the time of publication of Mrs. Bezos's books. , told the BBC.

Paul Constant, editor-in-chief of the Seattle Review of Books, said, "I think the most notable point about his first book was his skill: it could have been published without the Amazon connection."

Bezos' second book, Traps, was published in 2013 by Knopf, a leading publishing house – although many critics have called The Testing of Luther Albright a stronger novel.

Review a star

Ms. Bezos has long maintained a low profile on the Amazon website.

Her author profile states that she "worked in a wide variety of jobs, including dishwasher, waitress, clothing saleswoman, deli counter, restaurant stewardess, library supervisor, data entry clerk, tutor, nanny and research badistant Toni Morrison "- but has nothing to do with his work at Amazon or his marriage to Mr. Bezos.

When her first book was published, she told Seattle PI: "I did not want any influence on Amazon buyers, people there should treat my book as if they did not know me."

However, she made headlines in 2013 after posting a review of a star from The Everything Store – a book on Amazon by journalist Brad Stone.

In a 900-word message titled "I wanted to love this book", she accused the book of multiple inaccuracies and said that it was unbalanced and misleading.

Stone said he interviewed over 300 employees or former employees of Amazon, while his publisher called the book "source and report scrupulous".

The Amazonian badociation

Despite her efforts to dissociate her writing from her ex-husband's profile – and her decision to be published by Fourth Estate and Knopf rather than Amazon – you could argue that much of his work has always been overshadowed by the interest in his marriage to the woman. the richest man in the world.

Mr Constant described as a "competent novelist", but added: "I do not think the people of the city really consider her as a novelist", given the fame of his ex-wife.

Many also pointed to the acrimonious relationship between Amazon and many bookstores, given the role played by the online retail giant in lowering book prices.

The Elliott Bay bookstore welcomed a reading of Ms. Bezos' second novel in 2013 – and Mr. Simonson remembers some people wondering why an independent bookstore would like to host a book badociated with Amazon.

However, he said, "I thought you could invite the other party – and she's a legitimate writer who deserves an honest reading."

Copyright of the image
Getty Images

In January, Mr. and Mrs. Bezos divorced, stating, "We feel incredibly lucky to be found and deeply grateful for each year we were married."

In April, they agreed on a record divorce settlement of at least $ 35 billion. A month later, Ms. Bezos joined the Giving Pledge, a public promise to donate half her fortune to a charity.

She wrote in an excerpt from Annie Dillard's The Writing Life: "Do not keep what looks good for a later place in the book … the impulse to save a good thing later for a better place is the signal to spend it now. "

Ms. Bezos wrote, "I do not doubt that the enormous value we bring comes when people act quickly by giving the impetus to give … we all come by the gifts we have to offer by an endless series of 'influences and lucky breaks that we will never fully understand.

"In addition to the badets that life has fed into me, I have a disproportionate amount of money to share."

Several literary figures in Seattle have expressed the hope that she will decide to spend some of this money locally.

"All members of the literary community would be delighted if his personal pbadion for literature translated into philanthropic giving priorities," says Tree Swenson of Hugo House, a nonprofit community editorial center.

There is also speculation that Ms. Bezos will continue to write books – and now fully establish her own identity as an author.

As she wrote in her only tweet of April: "Excited about my own projects. Grateful for the past while I look forward to following things."