Joan Mellen

Joan Mellen (née Spivack; September 7, 1941 – June 30, 2025) was an American writer and professor of English and creative writing.

Mellen was born in the Bronx in 1941. Her father was a lawyer.^[1]

She completed her undergraduate degree at Hunter College in 1962. She received a doctorate in English from the City University of New York.^[1]

She became a professor at Temple University in 1966, where she taught for many decades.^[1] A full professor of English and creative writing by 2004, that year she received the Great Teacher Award from the university's board of trustees.^[2]

She was the author of a number of books. Her early work in the 1970s was about film. In the following two decades, she wrote many biographies, while continuing to publish work about film.^[1]

Her 1988 biography of Bobby Knight came after John Feinstein's best-selling A Season on the Brink, and presented a more positive view of the basketball coach. Sports journalists took this as an attack on Feinstein's work, sparking heated controversy.^[1]

In 1994, Mellen published the first biography of Kay Boyle.^[3]

Striking out in a different direction, in 2005, Mellen wrote a book about the Kennedy assassination, criticizing the Warren Commission investigation. Other books on mid-century political events followed. She published a memoir in 2024.^[1]

Mellen participated in a Criterion Collection commentary track for Seven Samurai with film scholars David Desser, Tony Rayns, Stephen Prince, and Donald Richie.^[4]

She married James Mellen in 1966. They divorced in 1967. In 1969, she married Ralph Schoenman. They divorced 13 years later, but remained friends until he died in 2023.^[1]

Mellen died on June 30, 2025, at home in Pennington, New Jersey, at age 83.^[1]

• Mellen, Joan (1974). Women and Their Sexuality in the New Film. New York City: Horizon Press. ISBN 978-0818007057.
• ——— (1975). Voices from the Japanese Cinema. New York: Liveright. ISBN 9780871401014.
• ——— (1976). The Waves at Genji's Door: Japan Through Its Cinema. New York: Pantheon Books. ISBN 9780394497990.
• ——— (1988). Bob Knight: His Own Man. New York: D.I. Fine. ISBN 9781556111006.
• ——— (1994). Kay Boyle: Author of Herself. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0-374-18098-0.
• ——— (1996). Hellman and Hammett: The Legendary Passion of Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett. New York, NY: HarperCollins. ISBN 9780060183394.
• Richie, Donald; ——— (1998). The Films of Akira Kurosawa (Third ed.). Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-220379.
• ——— (2002). Seven Samurai. BFI Film Classics. British Film Institute. ISBN 978-0-85170-915-4.
• ——— (2005). A Farewell to Justice: Jim Garrison, JFK's Assassination, and the Case that Should Have Changed History. Potomac Books Inc. ISBN 978-1-57488-973-4.
• ——— (2005). Jim Garrison, His Life and Times: The Early Years. Potomac Books. ISBN 1-57488-973-7.
• ——— (2012). Our Man in Haiti: George De Mohrenschildt and the CIA in the Nightmare Republic. Trine Day. ISBN 978-1936296521.
• ——— (2016). Faustian Bargains: Lyndon Johnson and Mac Wallace in the Robber Baron Culture of Texas. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing USA. ISBN 9781620408063.
• ——— (2016). The Great Game in Cuba: CIA and the Cuban Revolution. Skyhorse. ISBN 9781510707405.
• ——— (2019). Modern Times. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 9781838717193.
• ——— (2024). Sherlock Being Catfished: A Memoir. Chicago: Trine Day. ISBN 9781634244848.