Marina Keegan

Marina Evelyn Keegan (October 25, 1989 – May 26, 2012) was an American author, playwright, and journalist. She is best known for her essay "The Opposite of Loneliness," which went viral and was viewed over 1.4 million times in ninety-eight different countries after her death in a car crash just five days after she graduated magna cum laude from Yale University. 2Biography Keegan was born in Boston and raised in the suburb of Wayland, Massachusetts. She attended Buckingham Browne & Nichols in Cambridge before matriculating to Yale University in the autumn of 2008. At Yale, Keegan majored in English and served as president of the Yale College Democrats during her junior year. She was to begin a job at The New Yorker following her graduation from Yale, but died in a car crash on Cape Cod, only five days after the graduation ceremony. 2The Opposite of Loneliness A collection of Keegan's works, both fiction and non-fiction, was published posthumously by Scribner on April 8, 2014. The book is named after her graduation essay and features an introduction by the American author Anne Fadiman, who was one of Keegan's professors at Yale. "The Opposite of Loneliness" was well received and quickly became a New York Times bestseller. The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof dedicated a column to the book, hailing it "a triumph" and urging readers to reflect on what they really want from lif