For most of my career, I’ve worked as an editor, beginning at a little lifestyle magazine called InFashion and spending a few years at travel trades before landing at Gourmet in 1996. I spent 12 years there, ending as deputy editor, and had the pleasure of editing stories by David Foster Wallace, Gary Shteyngart, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Junot Diaz, Stacy Schiff, Richard Ford, Michael Lewis, Nina Teicholz, and many others.
In the years since Gourmet folded, I’ve been mostly freelance, aside from shortish gigs as articles editor of OnEarth, the now-defunct magazine of the Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC, and executive editor of Whole Living, the now-also-defunct sustainability-focused magazine put out by Martha Stewart. I have also been an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and a contributing editor at both Modern Farmer and Condé Nast Traveler. My articles, which range from straight travel pieces to features on issues related to the environment, agriculture, nutrition, and the Global South, have appeared in Audubon, The American Prospect, Fast Company, The New York Times Magazine, and lots of other places. I’ve been the recipient of a James Beard Award for feature writing and of fellowships from the Alicia Patterson Foundation, the Carter Center, The Peter Jennings Project, and the New York Times Company Foundation. My book PLANET PALM was published by The New Press in 2021.
Along the way, I studied French literature at the Sorbonne and English literature at Hamilton College, and I got a Master’s from Columbia’s Journalism School. I also spent two years as a Peace Corps volunteer, teaching English and math in a little village in western Kenya. These days I’m based in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, where I live with my husband, our two kids, and our dogs.
