Little did I know at the age of two that my facility for reading billboards on the streets of Pittsburgh from my car seat would lead to a lifelong fascination with the written word. My literary leanings followed a familiar course through an early obsession with children’s story books, stacked in piles near my tiny rocking chair, to juvenile attempts at penning my own prose and poetry, and a compulsive stalking of book stores. Having received the proverbial writer’s degrees, a BA and MA in English literature, from Northwestern University in my case, I indulged a long-held fantasy to live as a bohemian writer in a garret of my own on the Left Bank of Paris.
Upon returning from Paris, I found myself in New York trying to carve out a niche as a freelance journalist at my dining room table with the help of a portable typewriter, while working briefly as a senior publicist at Christie’s, the international art auction house. Over the past twenty-five years, my articles and essays have appeared in newspapers and magazines such as The New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Chicago Tribune, Architectural Digest, Town & Country, Art & Antiques and Veranda, among others, for whom I have written about culture, art, design, travel, and spiritual and social issues. I have had the privilege of interviewing numerous noted figures, including His Highness the Aga Khan, architect Richard Meier, writers Toni Morrison, Doris Lessing and Erica Jong, choreographer Twyla Tharp, and artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Sean Scully and Kiki Smith. My art-related travel stories have taken me throughout the world, reaffirming for me that, in addition to traveling, “one of the greatest joys in writing is having written,” as Henry James said.
I am the author of Sojourns of the Soul: One Woman’s Journey around the World and into Her Truth (Quest Books); Artists in Residence (The Little Bookroom), a guide to the homes and studios of eight 19th-century artists in and around Paris; Best Bids: The Insider’s Guide to Buying at Auction (Viking Studio/Penguin Books); and Collector’s Journal (The Little Bookroom). In connection with my books, I have been interviewed by radio and print media and have lectured on the arts at New York University and other organizations. Along the way, my passion for fiction led me to Columbia University’s Creative Writing Program, where I was a senior writing fellow, having studied with the late novelist Raymond Kennedy, while publishing poetry in literary journals. I’m a member of the Author’s Guild, and divide my time between New Mexico and New York City.
