from male authors. In 1964, she published Up the Down Staircase, a novel about an idealistic young honors college graduate who becomes an English teacher in a New York City high school and deals with the gritty realities of her colleagues and students. The book was based on Kaufman's own teaching experiences. Up the Down Staircase was originally a short story—only three and a half pages long — published in The Saturday Review on November 17, 1962 under the title From a Teacher's Wastebasket. Up the Down Staircase became an enormous success, remaining on The New York Times Best Seller list for 64 weeks. In 1967, the book was turned into a film of the same name, starring Sandy Dennis. The book was also turned into a play, appearing in over 100 Broadway, off-Broadway and road stage productions. In 1979, Kaufman published a second novel, Love, etc. which was not a critical success. She later wrote several short stories and continued as a teacher and lecturer in New York City. According to Pearson Education, Kaufman has written, "I do not like writing; in truth, I hate writing, and would rather do anything else. But the joy comes when, almost in spite of myself, I come close to what I want to say. A sentence or an insight leaps from the page." At 99 years old, Bel Kaufman was hired by her alma mater Hunter College in February 2011 to teach a course on Jewish humor. She turned 100 years old during her first semester of instruction. "I'm too busy to get old", noted Kaufman, who spent her days writing in her book-lined study on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Personal life Kaufman married Sydney Goldstine in 1936 upon her graduation from Columbia University. They had two children: Jonathan (a computer science professor) and Thea (a psychologist). The couple divorced in the 1960s. Sydney Goldstine died in 2000. Bel had one granddaughter, Susan Goldstine, a mathematics professor. In the 1970s, Bel married, secondly, to Sidney J. Gluck, a photographer, Sinologist, and public interest advocate five years her junior. The couple remained married until her death. In 2010, Kaufman celebrated her 99th birthday at the annual memorial to her famous grandfather, the Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem. She was still writing at age 101, in July 2012. Death Bel Kaufman died at home in New York City on July 25, 2014, aged