Thursday, November 20, 2008

About Me

Hi.  I'm Julie.


I write with humor and candor about my life, my friends and family, and the particular demands of motherhood and wifedom in modern-day suburbia. I am obsessed with pop culture, television shows, movies, theater, and books. I consider myself a Renaissance woman who can talk at length about highbrow BBC programming as well as the worst of American reality TV.


For a long time, I was a middle school English teacher.  I loved my students and I loved reading YA literature with them, but I wanted to be a writer reallyreally badly, so I quit my job (right before the economy collapsed...whoops!).  I realized that it was time to leave the classroom when a lengthy stint on jury duty felt like the highlight of my career. I turned this experience into my first novel, Lauren Takes Leave.  You can't buy this book yet, but my grandmother thinks it is very funny, although it has too much cursing, if you ask her. Lauren is based on true-to-life, 30 and 40-something suburban characters who are on the verge, and it is currently looking for a home at a publishing house.  When I pitch it, I say it's like Ferris Bueller's Day Off, only the teacher is the one cutting school with her friends.  And then they go a bit Thelma and Louise.  (Yes, I wrote a book based on two iconic, 1980's movies mashed together to create an off-the-wall midlife crisis novel.)  

Three years ago, I began writing a humorous column for The Scarsdale Inquirer entitled On The Verge.  I then began writing for Scarsdale10583.com, which led me to The Huffington Post, where I also blog.  You can find all of that original material collected here, on this fab website that I didn't hire a teenager to help me build, but probably should have.  


I live in Scarsdale, New York with my husband and two children who I write about frequently. Although I would love to live in the city, suburbia is the inspiration for most of my funny ideas, and so I will remain in Westchester until my neighbors kick me out.

If you'd like to learn more about the cast of real-life characters that I write about in my column, please check out the "About My Family" post under this one.

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