The author of Prozac Nation, a groundbreaking 1994 memoir about drug use and depression, has died at age 52. Elizabeth Wurtzel had breast cancer, and she died from related complications, reports the Washington Post. Coverage:
- The full title of Wurtzel's book was Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America, and it turned Wurtzel into a literary sensation in her 20s. The book was "startling," per the New York Times, as Wurtzel detailed her sex life along with her drug addiction and depression. Lit Hub notes that Wurtzel is credited with helping launch a boom in memoir writing.
- Wurtzel was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015, and she wrote an essay in Vice at the time saying that "compared with what I have been through, it is nothing." She also wrote about her cancer and double mastectomy in the New York Times that same year, advocating for BRCA testing.