The Tibetan handmade gifts store is right around the corner from my old apartment in NYC. I went inside on my last visit, because my yoga-loving, slightly Buddhist mother had been charmed by this store years ago, and she had a birthday coming up. “Let me know if I can help you.” The woman behind . . . Read More

In my senior year of college, I took a playwriting class. We were given slips of paper with dramatic scenarios and told to write a few pages of a scene. It’s been nearly two decades since I read the information on that strip of paper, selected from a pile, and though I cannot be certain, . . . Read More

After my story about dating sober ran in Elle Magazine, I heard from other women also learning to navigate the Tinder era without a glass of wine in their hands. I know many ladies (and gentlemen) struggle with these issues, too, so I asked one of them if I could share our correspondence, and she agreed. (I’ve removed her . . . Read More

People often ask me if I’m excited about my book coming out. I am, though “excited” isn’t the right word. What’s the word for excitement that is also dread that is also a wild-eyed fear that wakes you up at 4am wondering what mistakes you’ve made that you aren’t aware of yet? It’s like excitement sauteed in terror. . . . Read More

I spent yesterday going through a giant stack of unanswered story submissions stretching back to a date I will not make public. Sometimes my job feels less like an “editor,” and more like a professional reader of email. There are just so many people in the world, and it turns out a good percentage have my . . . Read More

I am standing at the desk of an immigration officer at London’s Heathrow airport. The man flips through my passport. “And what is your business here?” he asks, not looking up. “I’m a writer,” I say. It took a while to put that down on official forms. I usually put editor, and then sometimes I . . . Read More

When I was 10 and 11, my next-door-neighbor and I used to talk on the phone at night. She and I were 50 yards away from one another, but confined to our own rooms, and so  we would tie up the line telling each other fantasies about John Taylor from Duran Duran — how we met him after . . . Read More

1. Tuscan Red The first thing I can tell you about the PR people for the “Fifty Shades of Grey” movie is that they are very, very serious about spelling out the title correctly. Twice, in a hurry, I typed up “50 Shades” and twice — very politely, by the same person — I was informed that . . . Read More

In October, I loaded up my red Honda and drove out west for two months. A tent, a Coleman stove, a guitar, and zip-up high-heel boots. I wanted to soak up both city and country, the spectacular hush of a canyon in the pre-dawn, and the gaudy 10pm bustle of Las Vegas. I had every . . . Read More

For many years, I was a person who was going to write a book. Friends introduced me this way: She’s going to write a book one day. I said this to myself, in quiet moments of contemplation, or in grand rallying moments when what you want out of life gets scrunched up against your nose. . . . Read More