Sheehy played a part in the movement Tom Wolfe called the New Journalism, sometimes known as creative nonfiction, in which journalists and essayists experimented with adopting a variety of literary techniques such as scene setting, dialogue, status details to denote social class, and getting inside the story and sometimes reporting the thoughts of a central character.

[4] Sheehy's article "The Secret of Grey Gardens", a cover story from the January 10, 1972, issue of New York, brought the bizarre bohemian life of Jacqueline Kennedy's aunt Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale and cousin Edith "Little Edie" Bouvier Beale to public attention.

[5] She later returned to school in 1970, earning her Master of Arts in journalism from Columbia University, where she studied on a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship under the cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead.

[5] It was here that Sheehy began writing professionally—she wrote for the company's magazines and worked with ad agencies to make informational filmstrips.

Sheehy became a mother, but continued to work for various publications including the World Telegram for a brief time in 1963 and then the New York Herald Tribune[5] from 1963 to 1966.

Sheehy participated in a number of important and significant cultural events in the 1960s including covering Robert F. Kennedy's campaign and Woodstock.

In addition to writing for New York magazine, she also wrote a monthly article for Cosmopolitan--her first story had her travel to India to meet Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his disciples.

Her Random House editor, Nan Talese, suggested that Sheehy use a Rashomon-style for the novel, alternating the story between the wife and husband.

[5] Sheehy's story was chronicled in the book Hustling and later made into an NBC 1975 television movie of the same name, starring Jill Clayburgh as Redpants and Lee Remick as the journalist.

The whole experience affected Sheehy deeply and on her return to the States she had a difficult time writing the story and developed a fear of airplanes which she later described as PTSD or posttraumatic stress syndrome.

[5] It was during this time that Sheehy's long-time editor Hal Scharlatt died and the book was taken over by Jack Macrae, the publisher of Dutton.

Sheehy then conducted hundreds of phone interviews for the book, where she identified that those who attained well-being have a willingness to take risks and have experienced one or more important transitions in their adult years which they handled in an unusual, personal, or creative way.

Vanity Fair's editor, Tina Brown, invited Sheehy to write political profiles for the magazine beginning in 1984.

[5] Sheehy followed this up with pieces on other presidential candidates including George H. W. Bush, Al Gore, Bob Dole and Jesse Jackson.

[17] In 1989, Tina Brown asked Sheehy to expand her character profiles for Vanity Fair to include international figures.

[5][18] Her profile of Gorbachev made the February 1990 Vanity Fair cover as "Red Star: The Man Who Changed the World".

[5][19][20] Charmed by the relationship between Gorbachev and Thatcher, Sheehy also wrote a play based on a fantasy romance called Maggie and Misha.

After a June 1992 appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show, the book went back for a number of reprints and eventually hit the #1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list.

[1][31] Sheehy wrote the cover story for New York magazine about the growing problem of amphetamine use among young people in East Village.

[5] Sheehy gained notoriety in 1971, after New York magazine published a series she wrote about prostitution called "Wide Open City".

[32] Sheehy told The Washington Post that she had created a "composite character" for "Redpants" in order to trace the full life cycle of a streetwalker, but the explanation was edited out of the story.

[5] Published in June 1989: French President François Mitterrand says Britain's prime minister "has eyes like Caligula and the mouth of Marilyn Monroe."

And as she completes her unparalleled tenth year in office, the most powerful woman in the world has vanquished the opposition, gagged the media, and booted out the critics in her own party.

Sheehy's 1992 article on Hillary Clinton[33] created a stir by quoting her mentioning rumors of an affair between President George H. W. Bush and a woman named "Jennifer".

Clinton considered that portion of the interview off the record, but Sheehy disagreed, and independently confirmed the "private conversation" Hillary had described by interviewing Hillary's confidante, Atlanta Journal & Constitution owner Anne Cox Chambers, who repeated the conversation word for word.

Kit Gingrich's first husband abandoned young Newt to a stepfather in exchange for forgiveness of a few months of child-support payments.

Her article also revealed that his wife at the time, Marianne Gingrich, did not want him to become president and threatened to make a revelation that would torpedo his 1995 presidential campaign.

Diagnostic experts told her that "The errors you've heard Governor Bush make are consistent with dyslexia," and that "a language-disordered person cannot take in a lot of information at once."

Published June 30, 2008: Hillary Clinton's campaign had it all: near-death moments, hard-won triumphs, dysfunctional relationships—and a staff consumed with infighting over how to sell their candidate.

In 1975, Roger Gould, then a psychiatrist at the University of California at Los Angeles, brought a suit, which was settled out of court, against Sheehy intended to enjoin publication of her book, which had not yet been completed.