Gail Parent is an American television and screenwriter, television producer, and author. Parent's writing career began with a 1971 episode of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show". The following year her novel "Sheila Levine is Dead and Living in New York City", which chronicled its unattractive, overweight, Jewish heroine's romantic misadventures in Manhattan, became a best-seller that later served as the basis of a film starring Jeannie Berlin. Wikipedia
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