Last night, as my husband and son watched an inappropriate comedy on television in our downstairs library, I sat at my desk in my office upstairs and wept. I was watching a link I found on Facebook to the memorial service for Esther Broner, who had been an influential and...

Around the time I turned 40, I went to see a therapist, a man who knew me well. I tended call him once or twice a year on an as-needed (read: crisis) basis. I had reached the point of being able to sort through most problems on my own. But...

The world lost one of its brightest, fiercest, most intelligent and compassionate souls this week when Grace Paley died at the age of 84. I had heard that Grace was ill, but it seemed impossible to me that she would die. She was just too damned tenacious to die. Too...

In an hour a car is coming to pick me up and take me into the city, where I am taping a radio show -- part of the slow and steady trickle of book publicity that I continue to do two months after Black & White's publication. And this...

Earlier this year, I found myself at dinner with a bunch of women I didn't know well. They were, for the most part, older than I, and mothers of high school and college kids. They were also a very particular subset: wealthy, privileged, living in Manhattan. The conversation swirled around...