Dorothy Sterling
American writer (1913-2008)
Dorothy Sterling (née Dannenberg; November 23, 1913 – December 1, 2008) was an American writer and historian. After college, she worked as a journalist and writer in New York for several years, including work for the Federal Writers' Project.
Biography
Sterling worked for Time from 1936 to 1949 and was then assistant bureau chief in Life's news bureau from 1944 to 1949.
Starting in the 1950s, she authored more than 30 books, mainly non-fiction historical works for children on the origins of the women's and anti-slavery movements, civil rights, segregation, and nature, as well as mysteries.
Personal life
In 1937, she married Philip Sterling (died 1989), also a writer. Her daughter, Anne Fausto-Sterling, is a noted biologist, the Nancy Duke Lewis Professor of Biology and Gender Studies at Brown University, and is married to playwright Paula Vogel. Her son, Peter Sterling, is a well-known neuroscientist and coiner of the term allostasis.
Sterling belonged to the Communist Party USA in the 1940s. Even after leaving the party, she said socialism was her long-term goal.
In early 1968, Sterling and her husband joined 448 writers and editors in placing a full-page ad in the New York Post declaring their intention to refuse to pay taxes for the Vietnam War.
The public source identifies “Dorothy Sterling” as american writer (1913-2008). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Dorothy, Sterling and American.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5298641. VIAF identifies the subject as 92656893. The Library of Congress control number is n50022441. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1913, 2008, 1936 and 1949.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dorothy Sterling” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.