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The National Women’s Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony this year will be held in Rochester for the first time. Among the inductees who will be there is one of my favorite writers—and a friend—author, poet, and humorist Judith Viorst.
Viorst, who turned 95 this year, says it’s an “incredible honor” to be selected for the Hall of Fame and she will “absolutely” come to Rochester this September for the induction ceremony.
“The Hall honors women I very much admire and to find myself among them is breathtaking,” she says.
Viorst is among five contemporary and six historic women to be inducted into the Hall of Fame at the George Eastman House on Thursday, Sept. 24. They will join more than 300 others inducted since 1973 by the Hall of Fame, which is in nearby Seneca Falls.
This year’s other living honorees include Olympic medalist Jackie Joyner-Kersee, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, former John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation president Adele Smith Simmons, and gender equality advocate S. Mona Sinha. The event is open to the public. Details and tickets—which go on sale today—can be found here.
The author of more than 40 books for both adults and children, Viorst’s books include the children’s classic, “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day,” and the 1986 bestseller, “Necessary Losses: The Loves, Illusions, Dependencies, and Impossible Expectations That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Grow.”
She’s also written books of witty, observant poetry, starting with “The Village Square” in 1966, and a series of books about aging over the decades, including “When Did I Stop Being Twenty and Other Injustices” (1987), “I’m Too Young to be Seventy” (2007), and “Unexpectedly Eighty” (2010).
Her most recent book, “Making the Best of What’s Left: When We’re Too Old to Get the Chairs Reupholstered,” is a collection of essays and poems about the ages between 80 and 100, what Viorst calls the “final fifth” of life.
I spoke recently with Viorst about her writing, the National Women’s Hall of Fame, and her upcoming visit to Rochester. A condensed and edited version of our conversation follows.
But first, some background.
Born Judith Stahl on Feb. 2, 1931, in Newark, N.J., she and a younger sister grew up in nearby Maplewood. Her father was an accountant and her mother a homemaker and avid reader.
By age seven, Viorst recalls, she knew she wanted to write and began sending poems to magazines.
She earned a B. A. from Rutgers University, where she majored in history. In 1960, at age 29, she married political writer Milton Viorst. They had three sons and seven grandchildren and were married for 62 years. In 2022, her husband died of COVID-19 at age 92.
Viorst’s early writing career included an award-winning column for Redbook magazine. Beginning in 1968, the column focused on humorous, sharply observed essays on marriage, motherhood, and aging, and ran for nearly 30 years.
Her 1972 book, “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day,” sold more than four million copies, and since has been adapted for the stage, was the basis of an animated musical shown on HBO, and a Disney movie starring Steve Carel and Jennifer Garner. A live musical production—for which Viorst wrote the script and lyrics—premiered at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in 1998. Today, the book’s title is used often by the media to portray stumbles by political figures and others, such as this from a July 13, 2026 Wall Street Journal opinion column, “JD Vance’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week,” and this April 2026 Sports Illustrated headline about the Philadelphia basketball team: “The Sixers Had a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Night.”
In her late 40s, Viorst returned to school to study psychology. After six years at the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute, she wrote “Necessary Losses,” her classic work on the lessons of loss and grief. The book remained on the New York Times bestseller list for two years.
I spoke by phone with Viorst on July 3.
(Disclosure: I had the good fortune to meet Judy and Milton Viorst socially in Washington, D.C., and she’s been kind enough to write endorsements for two of my published books.)
ROCHESTER BEACON: National Women’s Hall of Fame inductees have included Amelia Earhart, Rosa Parks, and Supreme Court Justices O’Connor, Sotomayor, and Ginsburg, to name just a few. That’s pretty good company to be in—and a long way to have traveled for a seven-year-old girl in New Jersey writing poems.
JUDITH VIORST: An unlikely trajectory, and an incredible honor.
BEACON: Any favorites among the 300-plus Hall of Fame inductees?
VIORST: I got a mailing from the Hall that mentioned Louisa Mae Alcott. You’re talking to a woman who can still recite, “‘Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,’ grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.” That’s the first line of “Little Women,” which I read about a million times. She was a heroine to me having written this book about how you could, if you’re a young girl, become a writer. I get a big kick out of it; it’s thrilling to be in what I call gilt by association—with “gilt” spelled “G-I-L-T.”
BEACON: I see that several decades ago you were inducted into your high school hall of fame in Maplewood, N.J.
VIORST: Yeah, Columbia High School.
BEACON: Now, honestly, which feels better: to be in your high school’s hall of fame or the National Women’s Hall of Fame?
VIORST: Oh, don’t make me choose. I want both.
BEACON: You’ve spoken about an incident when you were five or six years old and hospitalized with pneumonia. Your family thought you might die, and you’ve said your grandmother even picked out a tombstone for you. I’m wondering if that early experience affected your interest in grief and loss, and in writing itself.
VIORST: I think so, in terms of my interest in existence, nonexistence, and in expressing myself through writing. I mean, I didn’t quite know what was happening. I couldn’t breathe and had this thing over me—an oxygen tent—and wasn’t clear on whether they were trying to save me or kill me.
BEACON: You told an interviewer once that you “can’t not write.” What did you mean by that?
VIORST: If something’s going on in my life or my friend’s life, something that is really haunting me or capturing my imagination, I have to write about it. It helps me think about it. I started writing when I was very young and of course nobody’s publishing a little girl who writes with a number two pencil on lined paper in a notebook, but if it was in my head, if it was in my heart, I put it on paper and always imagined that someday someone would publish me.
BEACON: Let’s talk about “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day” and how that phrase has entered the language.
VIORST: I have a fat folder of usages for that phrase. It’s a big thrill that it’s become part of the language.
BEACON: Do you remember writing it?
VIORST: I vaguely remember. I don’t think (my son) Alexander ever said those exact words, but he was a very intense little boy and expressed his feelings with great passion, and so I remember more the intensity of his feelings than his actual words.
BEACON: Did you write a first draft of the phrase or change the words around to get the rhythm right?
VIORST: I don’t think so. It just came to me. You must know every once in a while, you get something like that—I call it a gift from the gods.
BEACON: Would you be willing to say which are the favorite books you’ve written?
VIORST: That’s like asking who’s your favorite child—but I suppose there are some books I’m more proud of than others. Certainly, I’ve been thrilled with the place the “Alexander” book has found for itself. And “Necessary Losses” was an important book for me. I spent three years writing it and I was able to take this field of study (psychology), which I loved, and put it down in words that my friends could read. That’s why I wrote it—for people like me.
BEACON: Do you have any tricks for facing a blank page?
VIORST: I started getting published at the same time I had children so I couldn’t wait for the perfect setting, for silence, or some beautiful idea to come dropping into my lap. I just put my butt on the chair, and I wrote. If there were 10 ways I could write it badly, I probably did all 10, but I just kept plugging away. So, you don’t wait for the right ambience or for inspiration. You just sit and write—and you very often throw out, throw out, and throw out. But you keep writing.
BEACON: In your latest book, “Making the Best of What’s Left,” writing about your husband Milton’s final illness, you say that suddenly you had nothing to say and so stopped writing and instead focused on caring for him—and you describe that time of not writing as a “relief” and “luxurious.”
VIORST: I was experiencing what I call “an absence of ambivalence,” an absence of being pulled in two directions at once. If you’re a woman with a family and career, you’re always doing two, three, or four things at the same time. I’ve written in the car when stopped at a red light on my way to the market, or while taking care of my kids. Now, suddenly, I had one focus, just one thing I really wanted to do: take care of my husband. He was not a demanding person, but he needed some help. So that’s the only thing I wanted to do, not because I’m a noble soul or a martyr or anything—believe me, I’m not—but I was taking care of my husband and so that feeling of not being pulled in two directions is very luxurious.
BEACON: What’s a non-writing day look like for Judith Viorst?
VIORST: A non-writing day … well, on those days I can actually get through the entire Washington Post and the New York Times and watch an hour or two of CNN. That’s pretty luxurious. And maybe going with a friend out to lunch and a movie in the afternoon. Yesterday, I took a day off for the first time in I don’t know how long and just went shopping with a woman friend and went out to dinner and it really felt like playing hooky from life.
BEACON: As you prepare to enter the National Women’s Hall of Fame, any advice, particularly for young women, either personal or professional?
VIORST: I’ve written a lot of advice in my books, but I’d say in terms of making your life easier, try not getting your feelings hurt so quickly. Realize you’re like everybody else, a big pain in the ass. So, when you feel you’re being so tolerant and gracious putting up with somebody’s irritating qualities, don’t delude yourself into thinking that you don’t have irritating qualities too. They’re putting up with you just the way you’re putting up with them.
BEACON: You’ve written humorous volumes of poetry about each decade of the aging process. Can you sum up your thoughts on aging and human mortality?
VIORST: I think about mortality a lot—and have never understood people who don’t think about it. For 23 years, I was a volunteer every Monday morning at a hospice in Washington, D.C. In each decade or stage of life, I try to see what I can shuck—get rid of—from the previous decades, and what’s valuable and helpful in the present one. I look at what it means to be at this stage of life and try to pay attention to the positive stuff.
BEACON: Reading anything good now?
VIORST: I just got the new Anne Patchett book “Whistler.” I love her writing. Her book “Bel Canto” is my idea of perfection. Somehow, it satisfies my soul. She’s a beautiful and insightful writer.
BEACON: You’ve been quoted as saying that on your tombstone, you don’t want any poetry, just the phrase “She was reliable.”
VIORST: It’s very unglamourous, but I like that about myself. If I say I’m going to do something, I do it. If you’re meeting me for lunch at noon and I’m not there, I’m probably dead or lying in the gutter having been hit by a car. I’m reliable.
BEACON: So, Rochester can rely on you coming up here in September to receive the Hall of Fame award?
VIORST: Absolutely. One way or another, I’m getting there.
Peter Lovenheim is Washington correspondent for the Rochester Beacon. He is author of “In the Neighborhood” and other works. His most recent book, “Gift Shop of Gratitude,” was published in 2024. He can be reached at [email protected].
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