MacKenzie Scott, one of the world’s most scrutinized billionaire philanthropists who has scrupulously managed her profile, is making a return to the public eye.
Ms. Scott, the former wife of Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, announced Saturday that she had written a new novel, her first book since 2013. The novel is sure to draw more attention to Ms. Scott, an intensely private person who has only spoken through annual or biannual blog posts since 2020, when she began giving away billions of dollars a year and upending philanthropy.
The novel is titled “Last Days in Two Nations (A History in Eighteen Minds)” and runs 80,000 words and 317 pages, according to the four pages of a manuscript that Ms. Scott posted on a newly started Substack newsletter on Saturday. Befitting her at-times cryptic communication style, Ms. Scott offered few details in the post beyond some of the manuscript’s so-called front matter: its title page, table of contents, character list and epigraphs.
Ms. Scott appears to be self-publishing the work on her Substack newsletter, whose name is the same as the manuscript. On Instagram, Ms. Scott encouraged her followers to “read and subscribe” at the Substack link, and posted a “Release schedule” that says the novel will be released serially throughout August. An aide to Ms. Scott did not immediately respond on Saturday to a request for any additional details.
Ms. Scott studied at Princeton University under the novelist Toni Morrison and won critical acclaim for her 2005 debut novel, “The Testing of Luther Albright.” Ms. Morrison wrote a blurb for it. Ms. Scott wrote a second novel, “Traps,” in 2013, and sat for a rare profile with Vogue. At the time, she was still married to one of the richest people in the world, whose company had disrupted the world of book selling.
Ms. Scott has cultivated an air of mystery in the 13 years since, granting almost no interviews even as she became a subject of fascination in the worlds of philanthropy and business. She finalized her divorce from Mr. Bezos in 2019, and almost immediately began giving away billions of dollars a year, with $7 billion in gifts awarded last year. She also briefly remarried.
Nonprofits that receive these enormous donations never hear from Ms. Scott directly, often only through intermediaries who take pains to avoid mentioning the name of their client. Since 2020, Ms. Scott has written a number of closely read, literary posts on a blog describing her approach to philanthropy and listing recent grant recipients.
Still, Ms. Scott, who is a major shareholder in Amazon and whose net worth now is estimated at over $38 billion, has often appeared uncomfortable with the amount of attention her unusual approach to philanthropy has attracted, regularly criticizing the news coverage.
“A belief in a diversity of voices drives my own communication choices as well. It’s what inspired me to override a personal preference for privacy and write a series of essays that bring attention to the work of these organizations,” she wrote in one post in 2022. “It’s what underlies my approach to press inquiries — respecting the autonomy and role of journalists by doing nothing to try to influence or control what they report.”
