Leanne Shear

Lee Woodruff's career as a best-selling author was launched with In An Instant, a memoir she co-wrote with her husband, journalist Bob Woodruff, after he suffered a nearly fatal head injury while embedded with troops in Iraq. Today her second book, a collection of autobiographical essays called Perfectly Imperfect: A...

Christine Coppa was 26 and living the fabulous life in New York City when--wham!--she got pregnant. In quick succession, her boyfriend of almost three months (and the baby's father) hit the road, she had a baby boy named J.D. (Jack Domenic), and got a contract to

I've never met Tim Russert, but I--like many others--feel that I know him intimately.

However, unlike the TV-watching masses that knew Tim only as a talking-head, ours was a relationship of shared origins. That's because we hail from the same hometown of South Buffalo, NY. Notice I didn't say,...

I'm a really competitive athlete. I have been from the minute I started playing sports in sixth grade, and probably before that in gym class and on the playground. If an expert were to psychoanalyze this compulsion, he or she might surmise that it stems from a fear of failure...

Spending this summer in Paris means that I'll be here for the celebration of la Fete de la Federation, or Bastille Day, which is today, July 14th — actually, by the time you read this, we'll already have been fete-ing over here for at least six hours...

Before I left for Paris (where I am spending two-and-a-half months living alone and working on my grad-school thesis research and a writing project), people warned me about the intolerant (especially of Americans), cold, and cavalier (especially about their dog's excrement) French.

After a few missteps (most notably, melting...

After bringing down the house at the Grammys on Sunday with her inspired version of "Be With You," Mary J. Blige hit the stage again to perform "Runaway Love" with Ludacris, a song...

Since I spent all of my formative years in Buffalo, NY, winter and all its trappings has long since lost its appeal for me. A few years ago I was waylaid at home during the holidays for an extra two weeks because of the seven feet of snow on the...

Title IX and Billie Jean King are the two reasons I seized the opportunity to compete on a varsity cross country/track team in college, though I wasn't born until about five years after they both forever changed women's athletics. Title IX legislation was passed in 1972 in order to ensure...

I've worked in a multitude of professional capacities over the years: intern, governmental agency assistant, mayoral staff aid, consultant, magazine reporter and writer. In a recent chatty phone call with my mother, I happened to mention in passing the common denominator in my disparate employment: that I've never remotely felt...

When I recently heard Hillary Clinton say my generation thinks "work is a four-letter word," I saw red. Until then, what we were called -- X, Y, Echo, i, Millennial, or the host of other monikers people have come up with to describe our enigmatic group -- never mattered...