Best-selling author Mary Higgins Clark has made a $2 million contribution to create the Mary Higgins Clark Chair in Creative Writing at Fordham University in The Bronx, New York. The chair will be a visiting appointment for a limited term, offered to a distinguished writer drawn from a variety of genres, to lead writing workshops and teach seminars and master classes to upper-level undergraduates or graduate students. The first holder of the chair will be announced in the spring of 2015.
Higgins Clark grew up in the Bronx not far from the Fordham campus. After working as a stewardess for Pan American Airlines and raising five children on her own, she enrolled in night school at Fordham and took classes for five years, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1979.
Higgins Clark, known as the Queen of Suspense, has written 42 books that have sold 100 million copies in the United States alone. Most of these books are suspense novels and several have been made into films or television programs. Her debut suspense novel, Where Are the Children? (Simon & Schuster), written in 1975, has been reprinted 74 times. Her latest novel, published in April is Daddy’s Gone a Hunting (Simon & Schuster).