I write articles, essays, and books.

i teach personal essay writing, in classes and individually.

I give talks on gender, marketing, stereotypes, and identity for parents, educators, and industry.

I do manuscript consultations and book proposal and writing coaching.

Shoot me an email if you want to talk work, or you’d like me to visit college class, bookstore, conference or other event.

Bookclubs, I welcome you! Click here. For college class visits, drop me a link directly.

Here's some scintillating background information: 

After growing up in various northeastern and southwestern college towns, I moved to New York City when I was 21 and had no idea what to do with my degree in experimental feminist video (good thing I went to college for free).

My brother offered me a room in his East Village hovel, and my first career was in film/TV (here are some props I made when I worked at Blue's Clues), but I was always obsessed with the relationship between the built environment and emotional experience: I wanted to know how architecture could help form community. So I enrolled first in a Ph.D. program in environmental psychology. Then, fearing that I'd get another degree like the one in experimental feminist video, I transferred to a masters in urban planning program.

Then one night my brother sat me down on his roof and said, "If you want to be a writer, why are you going to urban planning school?" So I became a writer, now of two novels and about 600 essays and articles about film and travel and the environment and real estate and parenting, for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Yahoo, and many other publications. My first non-fiction book, TOMBOY: The Surprising History and Future of Girls* Who Dare to Be Different, is out now.

I’m repped by the wonderful agent Eve Attermann at WME.