[4] Stein returned to New York and worked in 1955 as assistant to director Elia Kazan on the original production of Tennessee Williams's Pulitzer Prize winning play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Her final work was a cultural and political history of Los Angeles, West of Eden, published by Random House in February 2016 where she included interviews with stars like Arthur Miller, Gore Vidal, and Jacquelyn "Jackie" Park.

The magazine actively sought out international authors, visual artists, composers and scientists to bring to its readership.

[9] The $10,000 PEN/Jean Stein Grant for Oral History is awarded to support the completion of a “literary work of nonfiction that uses oral history to illuminate an event, individual, place, or movement.”[10] Stein's first marriage in 1958 was to William vanden Heuvel, a lawyer who served in the U.S. Justice Department under Robert F. Kennedy, and who later also became a diplomat and author.

She was also on the board of the 52nd Street Project, which matches inner-city youth with professional theater artists to create original dramatic works.