The Amazing Writing Career of the Amazon Boss' Wife

MacKenzie Bezos arrives for magazine interviewVogueIn 2013, she was not the wife of Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, but a novelist and mother of four.

The interview took place at a Thai restaurant in the Seattle suburb of Bellevue. MacKenzie Bezos, the reporter's impression, was not the soft-spoken and somewhat awkward-looking woman in the portrait printed on the back of her first book, "The Testing of Luther Albright," published in 2005.

However, the moment MacKenzie Bezos stepped into the restaurant, the reporter immediately realized that the first impression was wrong. This woman looked elegant with pale skin and high cheekbones, but there was not a trace of hesitation or hesitation in her.

Sitting down at the lunch table, MacKenzie Bezos began to talk about writing. Her first book took more than 10 years to create and “a lot of tears.” During that time, she moved from the West Coast to the East Coast, had four children—three boys and a girl—and helped her husband build the Amazon empire from scratch.

“Jeff is my most loyal reader,” MacKenzie says of her famous husband. The Amazon boss is always ready to drop all his planned work to sit down and read through his wife’s manuscript, meticulously commenting on every detail.

When she began writing her second novel, "Traps," MacKenzie decided to break her old habits to speed up the writing process even more than she had with her first. "Not talking to Jeff about the book turned out to be a very effective strategy," she says. "Because the sooner I finished, the sooner I could share it with him, and talk about the characters that had occupied my mind for the past three months. The characters were so real in my head that I could cry while driving to school to pick up the kids."

"Traps" is a fast-paced story about the life events that happen in just four days of four women living in the Los Angeles area. Just like the first book, which was listed by the Los Angeles Times as one of the best novels of the year, in the second book, MacKenzie uses her profession to build the character's personality, one is an animal rescuer, the other is a teenage prostitute. A high-ranking female security expert has the ability to predict threats but is clumsy in intimate relationships that require her to reveal the weak side of her human. A Hollywood star is admired by millions but has cut off ties with her mother for many years. The novel is a thriller, with the plot intelligently pushed through the psychological and personality developments of the characters, making the reader sometimes breathless and sometimes depressed.

Growing up in San Francisco, MacKenzie was the daughter of a financial planner and a stay-at-home mother. Throughout her childhood, MacKenzie was a shy bookworm who loved to spend hours hidden in her bedroom writing stories and reading.

MacKenzie decided to attend Princeton University to have the opportunity to attend fiction writing classes of famous black female writer Toni Morrison, who has received numerous awards, most notably the Pulitzer Prize for Best Novel for "Beloved", the American Literature Association medal for the author who has made the most significant contribution to the development of American literature and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. Writer Toni Morrison still considers MacKenzie Bezos to be "one of the best students I have ever taught in my creative writing classes".

Talking about her billionaire husband, MacKenzie Bezos admitted that marrying a man with a fortune of hundreds of billions of dollars was a lucky arrangement of fate, especially for a woman who only wanted to write literary novels, a career that, according to MacKenzie, does not make money.

"I'm definitely a lottery winner," she says. "My husband's success has made my life better in many ways, but it's not luck that defines me. The fact that I have parents who believe in the power of education and never doubted my ability to write, and the fact that I have a husband who I love—I think those are the blessings that have defined my life."

MacKenzie Bezos likened her first meeting with Jeff Bezos to playing the lottery. They met during an interview for a New York venture capital fund. MacKenzie said she needed the job to cover her living expenses while she continued to pursue her book writing. "My office was right next to his, and I could hear him laughing all day," MacKenzie recalled. "How could I not love that laugh?" She began a campaign to woo Jeff, starting by asking him out to lunch. After three months of dating, they were engaged. And three months after that, they were married. MacKenzie was only 23. Clearly, this young woman was not the type to hesitate in taking action.

Not long after they got married, Jeff told his wife about his idea to start an online bookselling company. "I didn't know anything about this business," she said. "But I could see how excited he was." And MacKenzie was ready to leave everything in New York, move to Seattle, and follow her husband's dream.

"I think my wife is resourceful, smart, smart, and hot. I had the good fortune to see her resume before we met, and I know exactly what her SAT scores were. The scores are... I never tell," Jeff Bezos said, laughing his trademark laugh.

In every way, Jeff and MacKenzie are a perfect example of a marriage where two individuals form a stronger team. "Jeff is my opposite," MacKenzie admits. "He loves meeting people. He's very social. Cocktail parties make me nervous. Small talk and crowds are not my strong suit."

However, when needed, MacKenzie can still stand up to take charge of public events, for example, she played the role of co-host of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Gala. That day, she wore a floor-length red dress by designer Juan Carlos Obando, a complete contrast to her usual jeans and shirt style.

It was not MacKenzie, but Jeff, who came home with a Diane von Furstenberg silver-embroidered leather bag for his wife. "I pay attention to her fashion taste, and you'd be surprised how good I am at picking out clothes for her," Jeff said of his frequent purchases of clothes for his wife. "Sometimes I call her and ask, 'Are you in this size?' She's surprised, 'Why do you ask?' And I say, 'None of your business!' Things like that make her happy." Jeff laughed and said, "I advise men to do that."

A longtime friend of the couple notes that while Jeff is an extroverted, quick-witted person, MacKenzie is more observant. "Family is very important to Jeff and he depends on her to maintain a peaceful family life. They are a normal, loving, affectionate family. Isn't that unusual?" Danny Hillis, a cancer researcher and longtime friend of Jeff's, suggests that wealthy families often live unusual lives.

Building a close-knit family takes time and energy, and so does writing, especially when it comes to complex, plot-heavy novels. It didn’t take MacKenzie 10 years to finish her first book because she procrastinated or was lazy. Jeff Bezos remembers waking up in the middle of the night on family trips to find his wife in the bathroom, tapping away on her laptop.

When she gave birth, MacKenzie decided to put her writing on hold to focus on caring for and raising the children. Despite her heartache, she had to give in to human limitations. "Writing is a pretend profession," she says. "You can't pretend if you're a lawyer or a teacher. Writing requires a lot of persistence and perseverance because you don't have anyone counting on you to keep working. Plus, the children needed to be cared for. After my third child, I knew I couldn't be the kind of parent I wanted to be, so I decided to go back to writing. Those were busy years."

People say that with such wealth, why don't they hire an army of maids and nannies to take care of their children? But that's not Jeff and MacKenzie's parenting style. In fact, over the years, the couple took turns trying to homeschool their children. "We tried everything," MacKenzie says, "like taking them on off-season trips, exploring science through experiments, incubating chicken eggs at home, learning Chinese, learning math using the Singapore curriculum, joining all kinds of clubs and playing all kinds of sports with the neighborhood kids."

When the children were old enough, Jeff wanted his wife to have more time to write, so he rented a one-bedroom apartment near home, giving MacKenzie her own space to concentrate. Every day she still took the children to school in her old Honda. If you met MacKenzie in the school parking lot, few people would guess that behind the simple appearance of jeans, leather jacket and boots, there was a woman who, with her husband, owned a huge fortune. "MacKenzie has a very clear sense of self-worth and that never changes whether she is rich or poor," said longtime friend Hillis. "They don't want to raise their children in silk."

Novelists often openly admit that their writing reflects their own personal lives. "I base my characters on people I know, but not exactly," MacKenzie denies. But some friends recognize parts of MacKenzie in her first novel's character, Luther Albright, a middle-aged father who, unable to express his true self, nearly kills his entire family. "She's not Luther," says psychologist Alexa Albert, a close friend of the Bezos family. "But like him, she's psychologically obsessed with wanting her children to grow up to be independent, self-respecting individuals."

Meanwhile, friend Hillis said MacKenzie was like Luther in one way: They both tried to understand people. "She always tried to understand the people around her and help them shine and develop their abilities," Hillis said. Family friends mentioned the parties MacKenzie hosted for small holidays. For example, on the Day of the Dead, she asked everyone to bring a dish that reminded them of their deceased loved ones. "At the end of that party, you felt connected and understood by everyone there," Hillis recalled.

“Overthinking” is a common weakness of smart and sensitive women. And MacKenzie knows this well. “When I write, I become a better version of myself,” she says. “And I’m probably a better mother because instead of worrying about my kids all the time, I focus on the characters in the story.”

Jeff agrees. "Writing makes her a happy person," the world's richest billionaire says of his wife. Any day MacKenzie wakes up early to write is a good day for the Benzos. "When I wake up," Jeff says, "I see her dancing in the kitchen, and the kids and I love it."

Amazon has been criticized for killing traditional bookstores. But MacKenzie counters that Amazon's goal is not to compete with traditional bookstores, but to bring optimal benefits to readers. Although Amazon has its own publishing house, MacKenzie Bezos does not choose "family" to print books. Speaking about his wife signing with another publisher, Jeff Bezos wittily said: "We call her the fish we missed."

An Hong