MOLLY IVINS began her career in journalism as the complaint department of the
Houston Chronicle. In 1970, she became co-editor of
The Texas Observer, which afforded her frequent fits of hysterical laughter while covering Texas legislature.
In 1976, Ivins joined
The New York Times as a political reporter. The next year, she was named Rocky Mountain Bureau Chief, chiefly because there was no one else in the bureau.
In 1982, she returned once more to Texas, which may indicate a masochistic streak, and has had plenty to write about ever since. Her column is syndicated in more than three hundred newspapers, and her freelance work has appeared in
Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, and
Harper's, and other publications. Her first book,
Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She?, spent more than a year on the
New York Times bestseller list. Her books with Lou Dubose on George W. Bush,
Shrub and
Bushwhacked, were national bestsellers.
A three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, she counts as her two greatest honors that the Minneapolis police force named its mascot pig after her and that she was once banned from the campus of Texas A&M.