Me, My Hair, and I (22 page)

Chill, I kept saying to myself, this is seventy-five dollars, not a hundred and sixty. When it was all over, I looked pretty good. I was happy, hairwise, and what's wrong with a little drama? Perhaps this too is part of the whole laboring to be beautiful thing. I can take it. I really can.

When I get home, I decide to check in with another hair guru. Google assures me in hundreds of photos that Joan Baez is still looking good—but now she has a short, styled, wispy gray cut, close to the scalp. In truth, she looks fabulous. In the hundreds of photos I scan, she is gray and gorgeous. Should I? Shouldn't I? Yes. No. Maybe. Not now. Not yet. Maybe never. Maybe soon. The answer, my friend, just might be blowing in the wind.

Contributors

Elizabeth Benedict
is a graduate of Barnard College and the author of five novels, including the National Book Award finalist
Slow Dancing
and the best seller
Almost
, chosen as a top novel of the year 2001 by
Newsweek
and
Fresh Air
. She has edited two previous anthologies, the
New York Times
best seller
What My Mother Gave Me:
Th
irty-one Women on the Gifts
Th
at Mattered Most
(Algonquin) and
Mentors, Muses & Monsters: 30 Writers on the People Who Changed
Th
eir Lives
. She is the author of a book on writing fiction that's widely used in MFA programs,
Th
e Joy of Writing Sex: A Guide for Fiction Writers
, and has published fiction and nonfiction in publications around the world, from the
New York Times
to
Daedalus
and Japanese
Playboy
. She's taught writing at Princeton, MIT, Swarthmore, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop and now coaches writers and edits manuscripts. She lives in New York City.

Hallie Ephron
writes suspense novels she hopes readers won't be able to put down. Her work has been called “Hitchcockian” by
USA Today
and “deliciously creepy” by
Publishers Weekly
. Her award-winning best seller
Never Tell a Lie
was made into a movie for the Lifetime Movie Network. Her recent suspense novel
Night Night, Sleep Tight
(March 2015) takes readers back to early sixties Beverly Hills on waves of Aqua Net. She wrote a multi-award-nominated how-to book on mystery writing,
Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel: How to Knock 'Em Dead with Style
, and teaches at writing conferences across the country. Hallie graduated from Barnard College and lives near Boston with her husband. She has two daughters and a granddaughter who can already catch and throw and run like the wind.

Deborah Feldman
was born and raised in the Hasidic community of Satmar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. She entered an arranged marriage at the age of seventeen, and her son was born two years later. At the age of twenty-five she published the
New York Times
best-selling memoir
Unorthodox:
Th
e Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots
(Simon and Schuster, 2012), and two years later she followed up with
Exodus
, a memoir of postreligious alienation and identity (Blue Rider Press, 2014.) Her essays have been published in the
Guardian Observer
,
Th
e Daily
, and
Salon
, as well as on CNN.com and Thirteen.org. Currently she is working on several new projects, including a novel and a documentary film, and is, most importantly, raising an amazing kid.

Julia Fierro
's debut novel,
Cutting Teeth
, was released by St. Martin's Press in 2014. Her work has been published in
Guernica
,
Poets & Writers
,
Glamour
, and other publications, and she has been profiled in the
L Magazine
, the
Observer
, and the
Economist
. In 2002, Julia founded the Sackett Street Writers' Workshop, and what started as eight writers meeting in her Brooklyn kitchen has grown into a creative home for over 2,500 writers. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was a Teaching-Writing Fellow, and currently teaches the post-MFA workshops at Sackett Street. Julia lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children.

Ru Freeman
is a Sri Lankan – born speaker, activist, and writer whose work has appeared internationally. She is the author of the novels
A Disobedient Girl
(2009) and
On Sal Mal Lane
(2013), both of which have been translated into multiple languages. She blogs for the
Huffington Post
on literature and politics.

Myra Goldberg
is the author of
Whistling
, a book of stories, which was a
New York Times
Notable Book of the Year. Her novel,
Rosalind: A Family Romance
, was first published in
Representations of Motherhood
(Yale University Press). Her essays and stories have been published in magazines and anthologies in the United States, the UK, France, and Holland. She is finishing a book on storytelling and alternative families called
As It Turned Out
for Fordham University Press. She teaches writing at Sarah Lawrence College and lives with her daughter and granddaughter in New York.

Marita Golden
is an award-winning novelist and essayist. Her books include the classic memoir
Migrations of the Heart
and the novels
Long Distance Life
and
After
. Her books are widely used in colleges and universities. She is the cofounder and president emerita of the Hurston/Wright Foundation. She has taught creative writing at George Mason University and Virginia Commonwealth University and offers her own writing workshops and literary coaching. Among her awards are the Writers for Writers Award presented by Poets & Writers and the Fiction Award presented by the Black Caucus of the ALA. Her website is www.MaritaGolden.com.

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein
, a graduate of Barnard College who received her PhD from Princeton, is the author of ten books, of both fiction and philosophy.Her novels include
Th
e Mind-Body Problem
,
Properties of Light
, and
36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction
. She is also the author of
Incompleteness:
Th
e Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel
, named by
Discover
magazine one of the best science books of its year, and the award-winning
Betraying Spinoza:
Th
e Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity
. Her latest book is
Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away
. The recipient of numerous awards for both her fiction and her scholarship, in 1996 she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, popularly known as the “genius” prize. She has also been named the Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association and a Freethought Heroine by the Freedom from Religion Foundation. She is professor of philosophy at New College of the Humanities in London.

Jane Green
is the author of fifteen
New York Times
best-selling novels. Initially known for writing about single thirtysomethings, Green has graduated to more complex, character-driven novels that explore the concerns of real women's lives, from relationships (
Th
e Beach House
) to motherhood (
Another Piece of My Heart
) to divorce, stepchildren, affairs, and, most recently, midlife crises (
Family Pictures
and
Tempting Fat
e
).
She joined the ABC News team as a writer and live correspondent covering the royal wedding, has contributed to various anthologies, and appears regularly on television shows, including
Good Morning America
,
Th
e Martha Stewart
Show
, and the
Today
show. She lives in Westport, Connecticut, with one husband, five children, two dogs, four cats, and a few chickens.

Katie Hafner
, a native of Rochester, New York, is a frequent contributor to the
New York Times
, where she writes on health care. She has also written for the
New York Times Magazine
,
Esquire
,
Wired
, the
New Republic
, the
Huffington Post
, and
O,
Th
e Oprah Magazine
. She is the author of six books of nonfiction:
Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier
(with John Markoff);
Th
e House at the Bridge: A Story of Modern Germany
;
Where Wizards Stay Up Late:
Th
e Origins of the Internet
(with Matthew Lyon);
Th
e Well: A Story of Love, Death, and Real Life in the Seminal Online Community
; and
A Romance on
Th
ree Legs: Glenn Gould's Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano
. Her most recent book, a memoir titled
Mother Daughter Me
, was published by Random House in 2013.

Maria Hinojosa
's twenty-five-year history as an award-winning journalist includes executive producing and anchoring both a radio show and television series:
Latino USA
, distributed by National Public Radio, and
America by the Numbers with Maria Hinojosa
, airing this fall on PBS and the WORLD channel
.
In 2010, she launched the Futuro Media Group to produce journalism giving voice to a more diverse America. Hinojosa has reported for PBS, CNN, NPR,
Frontline
, and CBS Radio and anchored the Emmy Award – winning talk show
Maria Hinojosa: One-on-One
. She is the author of two books and has won dozens of awards, including four Emmys, the John Chancellor Award, the Studs Terkel Community Media Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Award, the Edward R. Murrow Award, and the Ruben Salazar Lifetime Achievement Award. She is currently the Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz Chair of Latin American and Latino Studies at DePaul University in Chicago and lives with her husband and their son and daughter in New York. She is a graduate of Barnard College.

Deborah Hofmann
is a senior editor at the
New York Times
, where she oversees the best-seller lists. She has also written articles on fashion, and antiques and collectibles, as well as a wide range of general-interest profiles and feature stories, for the
Times
. She is a graduate of Barnard College and lives in Manhattan. She and her husband, Eric Asimov, are the parents of Peter and Jack.

Siri Hustvedt
has a PhD in English literature from Columbia University. She is the author of a book of poems,
Reading to You
; three books of essays,
Mysteries of the Rectangle
:
Essays on Painting
,
A Plea for Eros
, and
Living,
Th
inking, Looking
; a work of nonfiction,
Th
e Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves
; and six novels:
Th
e Blindfold
,
Th
e Enchantment of Lily Dahl, What I Loved
,
Th
e Sorrows of an American
,
Th
e Summer Without Men
, and
Th
e Blazing World
.
What I Loved
and
Th
e Summer Without Men
were on the short list for the Prix Femina étranger in France.
What I Loved
won the Prix des libraires du Québec in 2003. She was the recipient of the 2012 Gabarron International Award for Thought and Humanities. Her work has been translated into over thirty languages. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Suleika Jaouad
is the critically acclaimed author of the
New York Times
Well column “Life, Interrupted,” which chronicles her journey as a young woman living with cancer. An award-winning video series accompanies the column, which earned Suleika a 2013 News & Documentary Emmy Award. A strong and powerful voice for the young adult generation, Suleika travels the country as a health advocate and motivational speaker.

Suleika graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University in 2010 with a BA in Near Eastern studies and a double certificate in French and women & gender studies. Shortly after graduation, at age twenty-two, Suleika was diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome and acute myeloid leukemia. After three years of chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant, she is finally cancer-free and continuing to make the most of a life, interrupted.

Deborah Jiang-Stein
is a national speaker and founder of the unPrison Project, a 501(c)3 nonprofit working to empower and inspire incarcerated women and girls with life skills and mentoring. She's the author of
Women Behind Bars: Stories from Prison
(Shebooks), a collection of interviews, and the memoir
Prison Baby
(Beacon Press).

Emma Gilbey Keller
was born and raised in London, England. She is the author of two books,
Th
e Lady:
Th
e Life and Times of Winnie Mandela
and
Th
e Comeback: Seven Stories of Women Who Went from Career to Family and Back
. She has contributed to the
New York Times
, the
New Yorker
,
Vanity Fair
, the
Guardian
, and the
Daily Telegraph
, among others. She writes mainly about women for women. But she has reported on health for WNYC and frequently reviews books and items of popular culture. She lives in New York City with her husband, Bill Keller, and their two daughters, Molly and Alice.