About

I’m a Chicago-based writer and reporter. I’ve reviewed books for People, vacation spots for Outside and spent more than two years eating my way in and around the Loop for Crain’s Chicago Business, where I was chief restaurant reviewer. I started my journalism career at the Bergen Record, in Hackensack, N.J., where I wrote about business and contributed to the travel and book review sections. (I loved writing for a daily newspaper.) In Chicago, I contributed front-page stories and inside-the-book news and features to Business Week, Crain’s Chicago Business, Chicago Tribune, Chicago, Time Out Chicago and the Chicago Reader. I have three signed entries in the Encyclopedia of Chicago History.

I grew up in idyllic Demarest, N.J., and graduated from Marymount School of New York (a girls’ school in Manhattan, sometimes spotted in “Gossip Girl”). I began writing professionally while I was a student at Barnard College, Columbia University.

A collection of poems I wrote during college won the Lenore Marshall Prize for Poetry. When I talked to my advisor about careers, she paused and said, “Well, of course, you’ll be a poet.” That seemed too solitary. I wanted to find and tell stories, to explore! So, I took a job at a newspaper. I’ve been writing both fiction and non-fiction ever since.

A note about this site. For editors, I’ve posted about 10 clips, from mini reviews to multipage profiles. For agents, publishers, friends and family I’ve posted a poem, a short story, two chapters of the novel “Lincoln Park”, and two chapters of “Town”, the novel I’m working on now.