Eleanor Widmer

Eleanor Widmer, who grew up on New York's Lower East Side, earned a master's degree at Columbia University and a doctorate in English literature at the University of Washington in 1956. She had a varied career as a scholar, critic teacher, and a food and restaurant critic in the San Diego region where she made her home. She died in California in 2004 at the age of eighty. Up from Orchard Street was her first novel.