Judith Rossner

Judith Rossner (born Judith Louise Perelman, 31 March 1935 – 9 August 2005) was an American novelist.

Born and raised in the Bronx, she published her first novel, To the Precipice, in 1966, but became a household name with her fourth, Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1975) — a bestseller loosely drawn from the murder of New York schoolteacher Roseann Quinn, later filmed with Diane Keaton.

Her later novels include Attachments (1977), Emmeline (1980), which Tobias Picker adapted as an opera, August (1983), His Little Women (1990) and Olivia (1994). She wrote repeatedly about women's inner lives under social pressure — therapy, sexual freedom, family obligation — in a plain, unsparing register.