About

I’m a Chicago girl whose home base is now Nashville, and I’ve left pieces of my heart in Russia and London along the way. Here in Nashville, in addition to becoming mom to two challenging, beautiful kids, I’ve been a writer and editor, primarily for PEOPLE Weekly magazine and a variety of People branded publications.

For the past few years, I’ve focused on writing cover stories and helping to edit People’s standalone extension brand magazine, PEOPLE Health, as well as writing for a variety of People and Entertainment Weekly branded bookazines. I was the chief writer and researcher for a 2017 People bookazine on Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip (pegged to one of my personal TV obsessions, The Crown) and more recently I’ve been a co-writer for special issues on topics including The West Wing, Frozen 2 (earning points with my 5-year-old daughter), Olympic figure skating and Tejano music legend Selena.

Earlier, as People Weekly’s Nashville correspondent covering country music I profiled many of the genre’s icons:  Carrie Underwood called me after her wedding for an exclusive; Brad Paisley and his wife Kimberly Williams Paisley showed off their new baby;  Keith Urban shared his songwriting secrets and gushed (again) about wife Nicole Kidman;  Thomas Rhett told the story of adopting his daughter just hours after he and his wife brought her home from Uganda; Naomi Judd revealed the moment she contemplated suicide;  Amy Grant  let me watch as she cared for her father suffering from dementia; Luke Bryan recounted the pain of losing both his brother and sister. As a full time People staff writer, I also helped establish the magazine’s PEOPLE Country brand, acting as associate editor for a stand-alone magazine that covered country music from 2007-2014.

Over the years in Nashville, and earlier as a writer in London, I’ve loved being able to share less-star-studded, but truly remarkable stories: a couple who runs a green burial cemetery in South Carolina; a teacher in Seattle who holds her preschool classes in a forest, come rain, shine or snow; an American who helped Moldovan farmers reclaim their ancestral farmland.

I began my career as a crime reporter for the City News Bureau in my native Chicago before taking a two-year detour to teach English as Peace Corps Volunteer in Russia, an experience that opened my eyes to the world. When I returned home, I taught reporting at my alma mater, Medill School of Journalism, and wrote for the Chicago Tribune, before moving to London on New Year’s Eve 1999 (when flights were cheap and empty due to Y2K hysteria) for a new adventure. During my four years in the UK, I wrote for Newsweek, PEOPLE and Time International and traveled to more than a dozen countries, including a three-week reporting trip to Pakistan after 9/11. I also happened to meet and fall in love with a cute Nashville native in London, and in 2004 we moved back to the United States together.