Sugar in My Bowl (29 page)

Elisa Albert
is the author of
The Book of Dahlia,
a novel, and
How This Night Is Different,
a collection of short stories. She believes reading good sex writing is liberating and that women have a lot of catching up to do in owning our sexuality and doesn’t think she needs to apologize for being a normal mammal. Elisa lives (and loves) with the brilliant and ruggedly handsome writer Edward Schwarzschild in Brooklyn and Albany, New York. Their baby son is likely to be utterly mortified by this book in about twelve years.

J
.
A
.
K
.
Andres
is a writer, educator, and counselor. She holds a B.A. in history from Yale and an M.S. in school counseling from Johns Hopkins. She lives in Portland, Oregon, and currently juggles four screenplays, three children, two dogs, and one hunk of a man.

Susie Bright
is a feminist sex critic and erotic educator. Author of bestselling books
Full Exposure
and
The Sexual State of the Union,
cofounder of On Our Backs, her new memoir is
Big Sex Little Death
(Seal Press). Visit her at www.susiebright.com.

Susan Cheever
is the bestselling author of twelve books, including
Louisa May Alcott: A Personal Biography,
five novels, and two memoirs. As a bestselling novelist and biographer, who garnered critical and popular accolades for
Home Before Dark,
her account of her father, novelist John Cheever’s life, she appreciates intimately what it means to grow up immersed in the world of letters and under the implacable influence of an iconoclastic parent. And, of course, she knows well the challenges faced by a modern woman seeking fulfillment from and balance among the multiple facets of a complicated life. Her work has been nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the
Boston Globe
Winship Medal. She lives in New York City.

Gail Collins
is an op-ed columnist for the
New York Times
. She has also served as the
Times
editorial page editor —the first woman ever to hold the post. She is the author of four books, including two histories of women in America. Ms. Collins began her journalistic career in Connecticut, where she founded the Connecticut State News Bureau (CSNB), which provided coverage of the state capitol to daily and weekly newspapers. When she sold it in 1977, the CSNB was the largest news service of its kind in the country, with more than thirty newspaper clients. She then moved to New York, where she worked at a number of news organizations and was a columnist for
New York Newsday
and the
New York Daily News
. Ms. Collins’s latest book,
When Everything Changed,
is a history of American women since 1960. She is also the author of
America’s Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates and Heroines;
Scorpion Tongues,
a history of gossip and American politics, and
The Millennium Book,
which she cowrote with her husband, Dan Collins. Ms. Collins grew up attending Catholic school, and in this piece she reflects on how human sexuality was (and wasn’t) introduced in the classroom.

Rosemary Daniell
decided early in her writing life to break the two taboos with which she had been brought up as a southern woman—never to speak openly of anger or sexuality. Her beautiful, talented mother’s suicide had shown her where such repression led, and truth telling became Rosemary’s imperative, resulting in such controversial books as her first collection of poems,
A Sexual Tour of the Deep South,
and her memoirs,
Fatal Flowers: On Sin, Sex, and Suicide in the Deep South
and
Sleeping with Soldiers: In Search of the Macho Man,
both forerunners of the current memoir trend. Her most recent books are
Secrets of the Zona Rosa: How Writing (and Sisterhood) Can Change Women’s Lives
and
Confessions of a (Female) Chauvinist;
she is the author of three other books of poetry and prose. Among her awards are two National Endowment grants in Literature—one in poetry, another in fiction. Known as one of the best writing coaches in the country, Rosemary is also the founder of Zona Rosa, the series of writing-and-living workshops for women she leads throughout the country and in Europe. She is profiled in the book
Feminists Who Changed America, 1963–1975;
in 2008, she received a Governor’s Award in the Humanities for her impact on the state of Georgia.

Eve Ensler
is a playwright, performer, and activist. She is the award-winning author of
The Vagina Monologues,
which has been published in forty-eight languages and performed in over 140 countries. Eve’s other works include
Necessary Targets,
The Treatment,
The Good Body,
Insecure At Last: A Political Memoir,
and
I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World
. Eve has written for the
Washington Post,
the
Guardian,
Glamour,
Huffington Post,
and
O, the Oprah Magazine
. She is the founder of V-Day, the global activist movement to end violence against women and girls, which has raised over $80 million for grassroots groups working to end violence against women and girls. Eve was named one of
US News & World Report
’s “Best Leaders” in association with the Center for Public Leadership (CPL) at Harvard Kennedy School, and is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Playwriting and an Obie Award.

Molly Jong-Fast
wrote about her wild life as a girl in 1990s New York in a novel,
Normal Girl,
and a memoir,
Girl [Maladjusted]
. Her third book,
The Social Climber’s Handbook,
came out in April 2011 from Villard/Random House. She lives in New York City with her three children and two lizards, and her husband who does not like to be written about, at all, ever.

Susan Kinsolving
is a poet and the recipient of four international fellowships, which were frustratingly awarded without a fine foreign fellow. Her books are:
The White Eyelash, Among Flowers, Dailies & Rushes,
a finalist for The National Book Critics Circle Award, and forthcoming
My Glass Eye
. (Forthcoming is not a pun.) Kinsolving teaches poetry and prudery in The Bennington Writing Seminars.

Julie Klam
is the author of a memoir,
Please Excuse My Daughter,
and the
New York Times
bestseller
You Had Me at Woof: How Dogs Taught Me the Secrets of Happiness
. She writes for
O, the Oprah Magazine,
Glamour,
Harper’s Bazaar,
and the
New York Times Magazine
. She lives in New York City with her husband, her daughter, too many dogs, and a lot of turtlenecks.

Jean Hanff Korelitz
is a native New Yorker currently in exile in New Jersey. She is the author of four novels, including
Admission
and
The White Rose,
a novel for children and a collection of poems, and a contributor to many magazines, including
Vogue
and
More
.

After
Min Jin Lee
’s husband, Christopher, recovered from the shock that she would not be writing about him (alone) for this compelling volume about sex, she decided that it might be safe to contribute an essay after all, since her mother and father would likely never learn about it. It also occurred to her that one day her son, Sam, might think she was far more interesting (read cooler) than she appeared. Lee is the author of the novel
Free Food for Millionaires,
which was a number one Book Sense Pick, a
New York Times
Editors’ Choice, a
Wall Street Journal
Juggle Book Club selection, and a national bestseller. It was a “Top Ten Novels of the Year” for the
Times
of London, NPR’S
Fresh Air,
and
USA Today
. Her essays have appeared in the
Wall Street Journal, Travel + Leisure, Food & Wine, Vogue, Condé Nast Traveler,
and the
Times
of London. She was a columnist for the
Chosun Ilbo
. Lee lives in Tokyo with her husband and son.

Ariel Levy
is a staff writer at the
New Yorker
magazine, where she writes frequently about sexuality and gender. She has profiled the radical feminist Andrea Dworkin, the intersex South African runner Caster Semenya, and the lesbian separatist Lamar Van Dyke. Levy is also the author of
Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture
. Her work has been anthologized in
The Best American Essays
and
The Best American Crime Reporting
.

Margot Magowan
has been trying to save the world since she was nine years old when a random woman in San Francisco offered her a picket sign and some free candy. Margot grew up to cofound the Woodhull Institute, an organization that trains women leaders and change makers. Today Margot can be found blogging or speaking about issues that affect women. She’s appeared on TV and radio programs including CNN,
Good Morning America
, Fox News, and MSNBC; her articles have been in
Glamour,
Salon,
the
San Jose Mercury News,
and other newspapers; her blog, ReelGirl, rates media and products on girl empowerment. Now, living with her husband and three small kids, Margot would be perfectly happy to stop arguing with everyone about everything and only write fiction.

Marisa Acocella Marchetto
is a cartoonista/activista and the author of the graphic memoir
Cancer Vixen
(Knopf), which she is adapting into a movie starring Cate Blanchett. She is a contributor to the
New Yorker,
and has been published in the
New York Times, Glamour, Elle, Bon Appétit, Harper’s Bazaar, O, the Oprah Magazine, ESPN Magazine,
and the
Observer
(UK). As an activista, she has helped raise over a million dollars for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation and has raised a half million dollars for the Cancer Vixen Fund, which funds free breast screenings for women who are uninsured. Presently Marisa is finishing her graphic novel and is chained to her drawing board.

Daphne Merkin
is a cultural critic who has made a name for herself with her often unnerving candor and elegantly High/Low reflections on issues of family, religion, depression, psychotherapy, and sex. She is a contributing writer for the
New York Times Magazine
and was previously a staff writer for the
New Yorker
for five years. She has also contributed to a wide variety of other publications, including the
New York Times Book Review, Vogue, Elle, Travel & Leisure, Allure, Slate,
the
Daily Beast,
and
Bookforum
. She has taught courses on the art of reading and creative nonfiction at the 92nd Street Y and Marymount College. Ms. Merkin is the author of two books: an autobiographical novel,
Enchantment
, and
Dreaming of Hitler,
a collection of essays. She is currently at work on a memoir about chronic depression, tentatively titled
The Black Season
. She lives in New York City with her daughter.

Honor Moore
’s poetry collections are
Red Shoes,
Darling,
and
Memoir,
and she is the author of
The Bishop’s Daughter,
a memoir, and
The White Blackbird,
a life of her grandmother, the painter Margarett Sargent—both now available in paperback.

Meghan O’Rourke
is the author of
The Long Goodbye,
a memoir about grief; and the poetry collections
Halflife
(W. W. Norton), which was a finalist for the Forward First Book Prize, and
Once,
forthcoming in 2011. A culture critic for
Slate,
she has published essays and poetry in the
New Yorker,
the
Nation, Poetry,
and elsewhere, and has written frequently about the cultural anxiety surrounding women’s sexual freedom.

Anne Roiphe
has written eighteen books and enough articles to sink a small life raft. Now in her seventies, she is coming to the end of the story, which her children and grandchildren will continue. Body to body they were made and body to body they will make others in their image and she can’t think of a finer way to pass our time on earth.

Linda Gray Sexton
is the author of the memoir
Half in Love: Surviving the Legacy of Suicide,
published by Counterpoint Press, as well as four novels. Her first critically acclaimed memoir,
Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back to My Mother, Anne Sexton,
will be reissued by Couterpoint in April 2011. She lives in California with her husband, her two sons, and her dalmatian, Breeze.

Liz Smith
calls herself “the two-thousand-year-old gossip columnist.” Arriving in Manhattan from the University of Texas journalism school in 1949, she has worked in celebrity/showbiz for fifty-seven years. She has written for seven different New York City newspapers and for almost every magazine. She was a CBS radio producer for Mike Wallace, then an NBC-TV producer in the fifties. Later, she went on camera at NBC and won an Emmy for reporting from the battleship
Intrepid
on the fortieth anniversary of World War II. In her bestselling memoir
Natural Blonde,
she wrote about being a war bride.

She appears on Fox News and in seventy newspapers. She has become a voice of reason and common sense, observing popular culture. Her philanthropy is legend—raising millions for AIDS research, Literacy Partners, New York Restoration Project, the Police Athletic League, the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York, and the New York Landmarks Conservancy. (They made her a “Living Landmark” in 1996.)