Growing up on Staten Island, Nunez was an outsider to the literary world. Her father immigrated to the United States illegally at some point — facts on his life are scant, according to Nunez — working in a hospital kitchen and Chinese restaurants. Home difficulties aside, Nunez was an avid reader and a strong student, which earned her the scholarship to Barnard. Auden and Susan Sontag (who later hired Nunez as a typist, a period memorialized in Nunez’s one memoir, “Sempre Susan”). Silvers was notorious for yelling at his staff or barely noticing them, for expecting them to stay until all hours, as he would.

---

Persons: Nunez, Nunez —, ”, Barnard, Virginia Woolf, Nunez’s, “, Hardwick, — Hardwick, Robert Silvers, Barbara, Jason Epstein —, Mary McCarthy, Truman Capote, Edmund Wilson, Saul Bellow, W.H, Auden, Susan Sontag, Susan ”, — Martin Scorsese, ” Nunez, Silvers, Barbara Epstein Organizations: Army, Putnam, The New York, New York City, New York Locations: Staten, United States, Lowell, New York