Husband and wife share 'Prince,' book, Pulitzer prize

Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan's partnership started long before they wrote the book that would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize.

The husband-and-wife writing team, who wrote "de Kooning: An American Master," a biography of the painter Willem de Kooning, first met at The Daily Princetonian. He went on to serve as the chairman of the 'Prince,' and she became the editor-in-chief.

It was during senior year that their romance bloomed, Swan said in an interview Monday. She transferred to Princeton in 1970 as part of the second class of University undergraduates to include women. Swan majored in English and went on to write for Time, Newsweek and several other major magazines.

Stevens and Swan, both members of the Class of 1973, have pursued overlapping careers in arts writing that came together for the production of "de Kooning," which won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in biography on Monday.

Stevens spoke with de Kooning once in the late 1970s before the artist's dementia made it too difficult for him to be interviewed.

More than 10 years after that initial interview, Stevens and Swan decided to work together on a de Kooning biography. The book took a decade to research and write, with the couple using their reporting skills to interview hundreds of people connected to the artist.

Though the two worked together on this book, they have been each other's bosses at various times. Stevens was his future wife's boss at the 'Prince' when he was promoted to chairman, but Swan has since had the opportunity to manage her husband at work. When both were at Newsweek, she was a senior arts editor while he was an arts writer, she said.

"Any real writer realizes that writers contribute more to their work than editors," Stevens said Monday in a phone interview.

Throughout the conversation, the spouses finished each other's sentences. They mocked each other at first, but became more serious when talking about the honor of winning a Pulitzer.

Ultimately, their respective successes have bolstered each other's careers. "Both have us have read each other's stories before they've been published," Swan said.

Stevens, who was a Wilson School concentrator, is New York magazine's art critic. He has previously been an art critic for The New Republic and Newsweek magazines.

Their daughter will be a member of the Class of 2009.