About Me
During my entire relatively blissful childhood in Allentown, Pennsylvania, there was only one thing I wanted to be when I grew up: a New Yorker. I wanted to live in Greenwich Village and to write. When I was a junior at Sarah Lawrence College, I won Mademoiselle Magazine's Guest Editor Competition and got to spend a steamy summer in New York, writing - and sharpening pencils and running a lot of errands for my boss, the travel editor. My first love was travel, and my first job after college was as a travel writer for American Airlines. I lived in London, Monterey, Seattle, and finally, at last, in Greenwich Village. As a contributing editor of New York Magazine, I wrote everything from Passionate Shopper columns to features on chocolate chip cookie chic and on the roller disco scene in Brooklyn. Meanwhile, I was commuting to another Brooklyn, in Illinois, to research "Tales of an All-Night Town," my first book. Since then I've written six more books and hundreds of articles for dozens of other publications, including The New York Times Magazine (and several other sections of The New York Times), The Wall Street Journal, The Village Voice, Life, Esquire, Glamour, Redbook, Cosmopolitan, Ladies' Home Journal, and Family Circle.
In 1985, I got married. And became a parent and moved to Connecticut, where I've been living - and writing - ever since.
View from my dad's last desk
During my entire blissful childhood in Allentown, Pennsylvania, there was only one thing I wanted to be when I grew up: a New Yorker.