The oldest person at Doubles on Wednesday night will be Bel Kaufman, who wrote the 1965 best seller “Up the Down Staircase.”
Kaufman, 102, will make Joyce Carol Oates, Daphne Merkin, Malachy McCourt, Barbara Taylor Bradford, Mary Higgins Clark, Barbara Goldsmith — and other literary legends at the Hunter Writing Center gala — seem young.
“When I was 100, they called me the ‘grande dame of American letters,’ ” Kaufman told the center’s Lewis Frumkes. “Now that I’m 102, they say, ‘Big deal! I’ve got an aunt who’s 104.’ ”