Occupation Writer Ethnicity African-American Genre non-fiction | Nationality American Spouse Aran Shetterly Movies Hidden Figures | |
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Notable awards Sloan Fellowship, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities Fellow Books Hidden Figures, HIDDEN FIGURES M Nominations Goodreads Choice Awards Best History & Biography Similar Mary Jackson, Dorothy Vaughan, Katherine Johnson, Theodore Melfi, Allison Schroeder Profiles | ||
hidden figures author margot lee shetterly speaks with ryan heathcock
Margot Lee Shetterly (born 1969) is an American nonfiction writer who has also worked in investment banking and media startups. Her first book, Hidden Figures: The Story of the African-American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race (2016), is about African-American women mathematicians working at NASA who were instrumental to the success of the United States space program. She sold the movie rights while still working on the book, and it was adapted as a feature film of the same name, Hidden Figures (2016). For several years Shetterly and her husband lived and worked in Mexico, where they founded and published Inside Mexico, a magazine directed to English-speaking expats.
Contents
- hidden figures author margot lee shetterly speaks with ryan heathcock
- hidden figures author margot lee shetterly talks about new film
- Life and career
- Works
- Honors
- References
hidden figures author margot lee shetterly talks about new film
Life and career
Margot Lee was born in 1969 in Hampton, Virginia. Her father worked as a research scientist at NASA-Langley Research Center, and her mother was an English professor at Hampton University, a historically black college or university. Lee grew up in an environment of knowing many African-American families with members who worked at NASA. She attended Phoebus High School and graduated from the University of Virginia's McIntire School of Commerce.
After college, Lee moved to New York and worked several years in investment banking: first on the Foreign Exchange trading desk at J.P. Morgan, then on Merrill Lynch's Fixed Income Capital Markets desk. She shifted to the media industry, working at a variety of startup ventures, including the HBO-funded website Volume.com. She married writer Aran Shetterly.
In 2005, the Shetterlys moved to Mexico to found an English-language magazine called Inside Mexico. Directed to the numerous English-speaking expats in the country, it operated until 2009. From 2010 through 2013, the couple worked as content marketing and editorial consultants to the Mexican tourism industry.
Margot Lee Shetterly began researching and writing Hidden Figures in 2010. In 2014, she sold the film rights to the book to William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins, and optioned by Donna Gigliotti of Levantine Films. The Fox 2000 feature film stars Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monáe, and Kevin Costner.
In 2013, Shetterly founded The Human Computer Project, an organization whose mission is to archive the work of all of the women who worked as computers and mathematicians in the early days of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
Works
Honors
Shetterly received a 2014 Book Grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for her book Hidden Figures.
The book's film rights were quickly sold and a feature film based on her book was developed. The film of the same name was released the same year that her book was published.
Shetterly has received two grants from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities for her work on The Human Computer Project.