About

I have moved 13 times. Some might call that unlucky. I don’t. By the time I turned 15, I had lived in four very different states (Illinois, New Jersey, Minnesota and Florida), and this quasi-nomadic lifestyle was perhaps the strongest formative experience of my youth. I credit that lifestyle for the following traits:

I love to travel.

I’m very self-reliant.

I love the written word.

The first two might seem obvious, but the third isn’t as self-explanatory. Let me put it this way: When you’re “the new girl,” a role I played time and again, you take companionship wherever you can get it: my mom, my older brother, our Lhasa Apso … and reading and writing.

Around fifth grade, I started scrawling short stories in a spiral-bound notebook, complete with illustrations, and I then graduated to my father’s electric typewriter. Soon, I was hammering out stories on an early laptop. (And I mean early. This thing must have been a prototype; it ran on MS-DOS and only had a word processor.) I even created my own magazines using clippings from my mom’s Glamour and Vanity Fair, as well as the occasional LL Bean catalog.

I excelled in school subjects where reading and writing were involved (English, history) and less than excelled at numbers-based subjects (math, physics). Senior year, I earned a bit of fame among my International Baccalaureate peers by scoring a perfect 800 on my SAT verbal.

I went on to major in magazine journalism, figuring that long-form writing would fit the fiction lover in me. Not only was that belief confirmed, but, via design and photography classes, I learned that I have a pretty good eye, too.

Since then, I’ve been writing and editing on staff at lifestyle magazines throughout the state as well as freelancing for local and national publications. I’m interested in everything – from current events, politics and business to shelter, beauty, fashion, travel and wellness – and the topics I cover are just as far-flung.

Feel free to call me a generalist. I won’t take it personally.

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