Ilene Beckerman (born 1935) is an American writer, who was not published until she was 60 years old, and a former advertising agency executive.
[2] Beckerman did not start her career as a writer until she was almost 60 years old, after having risen to become vice-president of an advertising agency.
[3] In 1995, at the age of 60, Beckerman published Love, Loss, and What I Wore, which Publishers Weekly called a " "captivating little pictorial autobiography for adults ... a wry commentary on the pressures women constantly face to look good".
[2][1] In 2011, she published, The Smartest Woman I Know, an account of her life with her grandmother, Ettie Goldberg, who she lived with after her mother died.
[4] When she was 12 years old, her mother died, and she went to live in Manhattan with her grandparents, who ran a candy store on Madison Avenue between 64th and 65th Streets.