Thurman is the author of “Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller,� which won the 1983 National Book Award for Non-Fiction, and “Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette,� (1999), winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Biography, and the Salon Book Award for biography. The Dinesen biography served as the basis for Sydney Pollack’s movie “Out of Africa.� A collection of her New Yorker essays, “Cleopatra’s Nose,� was published in 2007.