Pulitzer-Winner Anna Quindlen to Leave N.Y. Times

Columnist Anna Quindlen, who was seen by colleagues as a top contender to run the New York Times one day, is leaving the paper.

Quindlen, 42, who attracted a national following with her column “Life in the 30s,” said Friday that she was giving up her coveted perch on the Times Op-Ed page to pursue her career as a novelist.

Sources say publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. had offered Quindlen top editing jobs with the understanding that she would be in a strong position to become managing editor when Gene Roberts steps down in three years, and perhaps executive editor after that. But Quindlen, who works out of her Hoboken, N.J., home and prizes her time with her three children, ages 11, 9 and 5, decided the price was too high.

“It was a difficult and painful decision,” Quindlen said. “I love the place and just had the best life there.” She said she was not tired of the Op-Ed grind but that “the biggest danger in writing a column is overstaying your welcome. I’m not sure how much longer I could have sustained it.”

A former reporter and deputy metropolitan editor who joined the Times in 1977, Quindlen moved to the Op-Ed page in 1990 and is the only regular female columnist. She won a Pulitzer Prize for her 1991 columns on her support for abortion rights and Anita Faye Hill and for her opposition to the Persian Gulf War.

“It’s hard to imagine the Times without Anna,” said reporter Maureen Dowd, who was hired by Quindlen.

Last spring, after finishing her second novel, “One True Thing,” Quindlen, who is married to prominent attorney Gerald Krovatin, told Sulzberger that she planned to abandon punditry. She said “it was hard for both of us” but that there was nothing to negotiate. “I’ve got the best job there right now. I just really wanted to write novels full time.”