Me, My Hair, and I (23 page)

Authors: editor Elizabeth Benedict

Anne Kreamer
is the author of
It's Always Personal: Navigating Emotion in the New Workplace
and
Going Gray: What I Learned about Beauty, Sex, Work, Motherhood, Authenticity, and Everything Else
Th
at Really Matters
. Her next book,
Th
e Risk Factor
, is about the unprecedented professional adaptability required of everyone in the twenty-first century. Anne has also worked as a columnist for
Fast Company
and
Martha Stewart Living
and is a frequent blogger on HarvardBusinessReview.org and NextAvenue.org. Her work has appeared in
Time
, the
New York Times
, the
Wall Street Journal
,
Real Simple
, and
Travel + Leisure
. Previously, Anne was executive vice president and worldwide creative director for the television channels Nickelodeon and Nick at Nite. Anne graduated from Harvard College and lives in Brooklyn with her husband, the writer Kurt Andersen.

Alex Kuczynski
is a former reporter for the
New York Times
, where she covered popular culture and the media industry. She is the author of
Beauty Junkies
, an exposÃ© of the cosmetic surgery industry, a nonfiction book that has been translated into twelve languages. A graduate of Barnard College, she contributes to the
New York Times Book Review
and various other sections of the newspaper, and she writes for magazines. She is working on her next book.

Anne Lamott
is the author of seven novels, including
Hard Laughter, Rosie, Joe Jones, Blue Shoe, All New People, Crooked Little Heart,
and
Imperfect Birds.
She has also written several best-selling books of nonfiction, including
Operating Instructions, Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son's First Son,
and
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.
Her collections of autobiographical essays on faith include
Traveling Mercies: Some
Th
oughts on Faith, Plan B: Further
Th
oughts on Faith
, and
Grace (Eventually).
Her recent books include
Help,
Th
anks, Wow:
Th
e
Th
ree Essential Prayers
and
Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair
.

Honor Moore
's most recent collection of poems is
Red Shoes
. Her memoir,
Th
e Bishop's Daughter
, was a
New York Times
Editor's Choice, a
Los Angeles Times
favorite book of the year, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Th
e White Blackbird: A Life of the Painter Margarett Sargent by Her Granddaughter
was a
New York Times
Notable Book. For her poetry, she has won awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, and to write
Th
e Bishop's Daughter
she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. For Library of America she edited
Amy Lowell: Selected Poems
and
Poems from the Women's Movement
, an
Oprah
reading pick
.
A new memoir and a fourth collection of poems are forthcoming. She teaches graduate nonfiction at the New School and has been a visiting distinguished writer at Wesleyan (poetry), the University of Iowa( nonfiction), and the University of Richmond (poetry and nonfiction).

Bharati Mukherjee
is the author of eight novels (most recently,
Miss New India
,
Desirable Daughters
, and
Th
e Tree Bride
), two collections of short stories (
Darkness
and
Th
e Middleman and Other Stories
), and numerous essays on immigration and American culture, and the coauthor, with Clark Blaise, of two books of nonfiction (
Days and Nights in Calcutta
and
Th
e Sorrow and the Terror:
Th
e Haunting Legacy of the Air India Tragedy
). She is the first naturalized US citizen to win the National Book Critics Circle Award for Best Fiction. She is a professor emerita of English at the University of California, Berkeley.

Rosie Schaap
is the author of the memoir
Drinking with Men
, named one of the best books of 2013 by NPR,
Library Journal
, and
BookPage
. The Drink columnist for the
New York Times Magazine
since 2011 and a contributor to
Th
is American Life
, she has also written for
Bon AppÃ©tit, Lucky Peach, Marie Claire
, the
New York Times
Dining section, PoetryFoundation.org,
Saveur, Slate, Travel + Leisure
, and many essay anthologies. A working bartender, Schaap has previously been a fortune-teller, a librarian at a paranormal society, an editor, a preacher, a community organizer, and a manager of homeless shelters. She is currently writing a book about whiskey.

Elizabeth Searle
is the author of four books of fiction, most recently
Girl Held in Home
, and the librettist of
Tonya & Nancy:
Th
e Rock Opera
, a show that has drawn national media attention. The rock opera, based on the Harding/Kerrigan skating scandal, has been widely performed, most recently in 2014 in Hollywood. Elizabeth's previous books are
My Body to You
, which won the Iowa Short Fiction Award;
Celebrities in Disgrace
, which was produced as a short film; and
A Four-Sided Bed
, now in development as a feature film. Her theater works have been featured on
Good Morning America
, CBS, CNN, NPR, the AP, and elsewhere. Elizabeth has had work in over a dozen anthologies, including
Don't You Forget About Me
(Simon and Schuster) and
Knitting Yarns
(Norton). She lives in Arlington, Massachusetts, with her husband and son. Her website is www .elizabethsearle.net.

Jane Smiley
's novel
A
Th
ousand Acres
won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1992; her novel
Th
e All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton
won the 1999 Spur Award for Best Novel of the West. She has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1987. Her novel
Horse Heaven
was short-listed for the Orange Prize in 2002, and her novel
Private Lif
e
was chosen as one of the best books of 2010 by the
Atlantic
, the
New Yorker
, and the
Washington Post
. She has written several works of nonfiction, including
Th
irteen Ways of Looking at the Novel
and
Th
e Man Who Invented the Computer
. She has also published five volumes of a horse series for young adults,
Th
e Horses of Oak Valley Ranch
. The third volume of Jane Smiley's trilogy,
Th
e Last Hundred Years
, was published in 2015.

Deborah Tannen
is university professor and professor of linguistics at Georgetown University. Among her many books,
You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation
was on the
New York Times
best-seller list for nearly four years, including eight months as number one, and has been translated into thirty-one languages;
You're Wearing THAT?: Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation
and
You Were Always Mom's Favorite!: Sisters in Conversation
Th
roughout
Th
eir Lives
were also
New York Times
best sellers. She has written for and been featured in most major magazines and newspapers including the
New York Times
, the
Washington Post
,
USA Today
,
Time
,
Newsweek
, and the
Harvard Business Review
and has appeared on such television and radio news and information shows as
Th
e Colbert Report
,
20/20
,
Good Morning America
,
Oprah
, the
PBS News Hour
,
All
Th
ings Considered
,
Morning Edition
,
Th
e Diane Rehm Show
, and many other NPR programs. Her website is www.deborahtannen.com.

Adriana Trigiani
is beloved by millions of readers around the world for fifteen best sellers, including the blockbuster epic
Th
e Shoemaker's Wife
; the
Big Stone Gap
series;
Lucia, Lucia
;
Rococo;
and the
Valentine
series. She is also the author of the
Viola
series for young adults and the best-selling memoir
Don't Sing at the Table
. She was an award-winning writer/producer of
Th
e Cosby Show
and
A Different World
and showrunner and executive producer of
CityKids
. She also wrote and directed the award-winning documentary
Queens of the Big Time
.

Trigiani wrote and directed the film version of her debut novel
Big Stone Gap
for the big screen, shot entirely on location in Trigiani's hometown with an all-star cast. The film made its premiere at the Virginia Film Festival in 2014. A wife and mother, she lives in Greenwich Village with her husband, Tim Stephenson, the Emmy-winning lighting designer for
Late Show with David Letterman,
and their daughter, Lucia.

Patricia Volk
is the author, most recently, of
Shocked: My Mother, Schiaparelli, and Me
and the memoir
Stuffed: Adventures of a Restaurant Family
. She is the author of two novels,
To My Dearest Friends
and
White Light,
and two collections of short stories. Volk is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and has taught at Columbia University, New York University, and Bennington College. Her writing has appeared in the
New York Times
, the
Atlantic
,
New York
, the
New Yorker
, and
Playboy
. She lives in New York.

Permissions

North America: “Sister” from
Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
by Anne Lamott, Copyright Â© Ù¡Ù©Ù©Ù© by Anne Lamott. Used by permission of Pantheon Books, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved; UK and world: “Sister” from
Traveling Mercies
by Anne Lamott. Copyright Â© Anne Lamott, 1999, used by permission of The Wylie Agency (UK) Limited.

ELIZABETH BENEDICT is the author of five novels and the editor of two previous anthologies, includingÂ the
New York Times
bestseller
What My Mother Gave Me.
A graduate of Barnard College, she has taught writing at Princeton, MIT, Swarthmore, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She lives in New York City. (Author photo by Daniel Lake.)

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