Author of “The Last Romanic,” an historical biography of Queen Marie of Romania, called by Graham Greene the best biography and one of the three best books of the year, and “An Uncommon Woman,” a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award, Pakula has also written for magazines including Vanity Fair and book reviews for the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times.
Born in Omaha, Nebraska, Hannah Pakula grew up in Southern California and claims to be the only woman ever to have attended Wellesley College, the Sorbonne in Paris, and Southern Methodist University in Dallas to get a B.A. Married to Robert L. Boorstin and widowed at thirty-five, she was married for twenty-five years to filmmaker Alan J. Pakula, who died in a freak car accident in 1998. A human rights activist, she helped establish Film Watch under Human Rights Watch and served as head of the Freedom–to-Write Committee of PEN, the international writers group. She was a recipient of the Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill medal in human rights. She has three children and resides in New York City.