Paula Fox (born April 22, 1923) is an American author of novels for adults and children and two memoirs. Her novel The Slave Dancer (1973) received the Newbery Medal in 1974; and in 1978, she was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Medal. More recently, A Portrait of Ivan won the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis in 2008. Fox is the biological grandmother of rock star Courtney Love.
Paula Fox was born in New York City, New York, the daughter of Cuban-born screenwriter Elsie Fox (née "De Sola") Ancestry of Frances Bean Cobain and novelist Paul Hervey Fox. She was given up for adoption as an infant and was passed among various relatives and friends. In her 2001 memoir Borrowed Finery, Fox recalled that at her first meeting with her mother, at age five, "I sensed that if she could have hidden the act she would have killed me." Not long after, another visit with Paul and Elsie ended when her mother threw a glass at her.
Through adulthood
A teenage marriage produced a daughter, Linda, in 1944. However, given the tumultuous relationship with her own biological parents, she gave the child up for adoption. Fox later attended Columbia University, married the literary critic and translator Martin Greenberg, raised two sons, taught, and began to write.
The daughter Fox gave up for adoption, Linda Carroll, is the mother of the musician Courtney Love.