Jun 1, 2019

MacKenzie Bezos: Novelist and Amazon shareholder

Unlike her high-profile former husband, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Ms Bezos is an extremely private person. Her first reading was at the Elliot Bay Book Company - an independent book store with a cafe that Mr Bezos had also used for business meetings in the early days of Amazon. "My impression was that she was serious about her work... I admired the fact that she kept at it, given everything else she had going on," Mary Ann Gwinn, who was Seattle Times book editor when Ms Bezos' books were published, told the BBC. Meanwhile, Paul Constant, editor of the Seattle Review of Books, says: "I think the thing that was most remarkable about her first book was how competent it was - she could have been published without the Amazon connection." Her author profile mentions she "Worked a wide variety of jobs, including dishwasher, waitress, clothing salesperson, deli cashier, restaurant hostess, library monitor, data entry clerk, tutor, nanny, and research assistant to Toni Morrison" - but has nothing about her work at Amazon or her marriage to Mr Bezos. The Elliott Bay book shop hosted a reading of Ms Bezos' second novel in 2013 - and Mr Simonson recalls some people questioning why an independent book shop would want to host a book associated with Amazon.

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