Fiction writer Jennifer Weiner made headlines when she challenged book critics for dismissing books by women as “chick lit” but reviewing and honoring books by men on the same topics. Weiner started Princeton University at age seventeen and graduated in 1991, publishing her first short story, “Tour of Duty,” in Seventeen the following year. She became a reporter and columnist for several newspapers including the Centre Daily Times in Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia Inquirer before publishing her first novel, Good in Bed, in 2001. Her second novel, In Her Shoes, was adapted as a movie starring Shirley MacLaine, Cameron Diaz, and Toni Collette. As of 2025, she has published 23 books and a number of short stories, many of them New York Times bestsellers. She has also written for television and worked as a television producer. In 2011 she spoke out in several interviews about the publishing industry’s sexism, pointing out that critics lavished attention on male authors for writing about friendship, love, and midlife crises while dismissing female authors who wrote on the same subjects with the same literary style.