With her husband, art critic Mark Stevens, she is the author of de Kooning: An American Master (2004), a biography of Dutch-American artist Willem de Kooning, which was awarded the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.
[3] In her review in The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote: "The elusiveness of its subject makes the achievements of de Kooning: An American Master that much more dazzling.
"[4] A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Princeton University (Class of 1973), Swan was the first woman editor-in-chief of The Daily Princetonian.
[5] She was named a Marshall Scholar[6] and earned her master's degree at King's College, Cambridge.
She began her writing career at Time, then joined Newsweek in 1980 as music critic, becoming the magazine's senior arts editor in 1983.