MacKenzie Scott - ex-wife of billionaire Jeff Bezos - once studied creative writing with the Nobel-winning writer, whose first novel won the American Book Award.
One day in early August, MacKenzie Scott surprised the media when she announced the release of a completely free novel on the Substack platform. The work is called Last Days in Two Nations (The last days in two countries, also known as A History in Eighteen Minds, History in 18 minds).
The book's content is 80,000 words long, set in a fantasy world. In it, Scott writes about America during the chaos, divided into two countries including the "Still United" States and the Dakota Membership - a separatist territory located in the west. In both places, politicians constantly compete for power and indulge in debauchery.
The work marks the return of Ms. MacKenzie Scott as a novelist 13 years after releasing Traps - the second book of her literary career. The period of absence from the literary scene was long enough for some people to forget Scott's writing career. Instead, they remember her as "Jeff Bezos's ex-wife" and the journey she took with Bezos to build the Amazon empire.
After the famous divorce in 2019, MacKenzie Scott became even more famous when she entered the ranks of the richest women in the world, receiving about 38 billion USD from her marriage to Bezos. At the same time, she is known as a philanthropic billionaire, having given away about 26 billion USD to charity organizations over the years, according to Forbes. Also according to data from this site, Scott currently has 33.1 billion USD.
Before entering the world of super-rich, Ms. MacKenzie Scott's life began from the pages of literature. She was born in 1970 into a wealthy family in San Francisco, with a father who worked as a financial advisor and a mother who stayed home to take care of the children. According to Fantastic Fiction, she wrote her first book, The Book Worm, 142 pages long, at the age of six, but the manuscript was lost in a flood.
Events struck when Scott was 17 years old when her father's company went bankrupt, forcing her to work part-time and try to graduate from high school a year early. After entering Princeton University, she continued to work many jobs from dishwasher, restaurant server, clothing seller, cashier to data entry clerk, tutor, and nanny to earn money to pay for tuition.
At this time, she studied creative writing from writer Toni Morrison - who won the Nobel Prize in 1993. She was considered "one of the outstanding students" by her lecturers. Later, Morrison not only became Scott's thesis supervisor but also a teacher who brought her many life lessons.
After graduating, MacKenzie Scott moved to New York to pursue a literary career. In 1993, she married Jeff Bezos after six months of dating. The two first met when Bezos interviewed his future wife for a position at a venture capital firm. When the two moved to Seattle so Bezos could realize his dream of opening an online bookstore, Scott became one of Amazon's first employees, working part-time for him.
While supporting her husband, she still honed her writing, attending a workshop with writer Ethan Canin in 1996. According to WSJ, Canin commented that MacKenzie Scott is a quiet and modest person. "She is really a good writer, serious, character-focused, hard-working, thoughtful. She is also strict with herself," he said.
In 2005, MacKenzie Scott published her first novel, The Testing of Luther Albright, developed from a college project. The content revolves around Luther - a construction engineer who gradually distances himself from everyone after an earthquake. Talking to Vogue in 2013, Scott said the work took about 10 years and "a lot of tears" to complete because he was too busy taking care of his children and supporting Jeff Bezos. She and her husband have four children, including three biological sons and an adopted daughter from China. Except for the eldest child born in 2000, the two kept the remaining children's information private.
Finally, all her efforts paid off. In 2006, her novel won the American Book Awards, an annual award honoring outstanding American literary works. Previously, Publisher's Weekly magazine commented that MacKenzie Scott's debut work was "impressive, quietly powerful", and the Los Angeles Times chose this as "book of the year".
According to Vanity Fair, she had a period of stopping writing after giving birth to her third child. In 2013, the author re-entered the literary scene with Traps. On a talk show with journalist Charlie Rose, she described this novel as a turning point in creativity because the story takes place in only four days, told in the third person. The content revolves around four women, including an Oscar-winning star who is stalked by paparazzi and a teenage mother who just gave birth to twins.
While researching the character, Scott worked for a few days at a dog rescue shelter, visiting the set. When writing this work, she wanted to explore the paradox that the things and mistakes that worry people the most and have encountered are the things that bring people to where they need to go.
The novel also received many compliments from the media. The New York Times highly appreciated the author's succinct way of writing, describing the characters' situations in dangerous moments. Booklist page said that although the writer resolved some knots too easily, she built an attractive story about the four female leads, controlling the story's pace well.
Closing her marriage with Jeff Bezos, MacKenzie Scott lives a private life. In 2021, she remarried her child's chemistry teacher - Dan Jewett, but divorced after a year. When she was still with Bezos, she once described her ex-husband as "the best reader", willing to spend time reading moglie's manuscripts and giving detailed comments.
Also in an interview with Vogue, she admitted that having a billionaire husband is a lucky thing, especially for someone who is a novelist. However, MacKenzie Scott believes that the fact that her parents always supported her education and believed in her creative ability helped her succeed.
