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Wendy Wasserstein was an American playwright and an Andrew Dickson White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University. She received the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1989 for her play The Heidi Chronicles. Wasserstein was born in the Brooklyn section of New York City to... Morris Wasserstein, a wealthy textile executive, and his wife, Lola Schleifer, an amateur dancer who moved to the United States from Poland when her father was accused of being a spy. Lola Wasserstein reportedly inspired some of her daughter's characters. Wendy was one of five siblings, including brother Bruce Wasserstein, a well-known investment banker. Her maternal grandfather was Simon Schleifer, a yeshiva teacher in Wloclawek, Poland, who moved to Paterson, New Jersey and became a Hebrew school principal. Claims that Schleifer was a playwright are probably apocryphal, as contemporaries didn't recall this and the assertion only appeared once Wasserstein had won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. A graduate of the Calhoun School, Wasserstein earned a B.A. in history from Mount Holyoke College in 1971, an M.A.
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