Synopses & Reviews
Whether you drink it or not, alcohol is likely a potent part of your life: our culture is saturated in it. Ask any woman you know to tell you a drinking story, and shell come up with onein fact, she may even come up with five. With friends and with coworkers, at date night and at ladies' night, and on special occasions ranging from Valentines Day to the Super Bowl, we encounter alcoholyet when it comes to discussing the nature of our relationship with drinking, few of us do so honestly and openly.
In Drinking Diaries, editors Leah Odze Epstein and Caren Osten Gerszberg take women's drinking stories out of the closet and into the light. Whether its shame, sober sex, and relapsing, or college drinking, bonding, and comparing the benefits of pot vs. booze, no topic related to alcohol is off limits in this illuminating anthology. With contributions from celebrated writers including Jacquelyn Mitchard, Daphne Merkin, Kathryn Harrison, Ann Hood, Ann Leary, Pam Houston, Jane Friedman, Elissa Schappell, Asra Nomani, Priscilla Warner, Rita Williams, and Joyce Maynard, Drinking Diaries is a candid look at the pleasures and pains of drinking, and the many ways in which it touches womens lives.
About the Author
Caren Osten Gerszberg is a freelance writer and co-founder of the blog Drinking Diaries. Gerszbergs articles have appeared in
The New York Times, Travel and Leisure, National Geographic Traveler, Parents, and other national magazines and websites. She has also had a regular column, Mom U,” about her daughters college admission experience, at NYTimes.com.
Born and raised in New York, Gerszberg graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, going on to earn a dual master's degree in French and journalism at New York University. Her career in publishing began with a summer job at French Vogue in Paris, which paved the way for a full-time position at Mademoiselle magazine in New York. After four years as a research editor at Rolling Stone, Gerszberg launched her freelance career, and also became the New York correspondent for French Glamour, writing a monthly column in French.
Gerszberg has taught feature writing as an adjunct professor at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. A passionate traveler, she lives in Westchester County, New York, with her husband, three children, and two dogs.
Leah Odze Epstein, co-founder of the blog Drinking Diaries, is a young adult and adult fiction writer. She has worked as a news assistant at The New York Times, an adjunct professor of writing at Baruch College, and an assistant editor at One World/Ballantine Books.
Epstein has written book and movie reviews for publications including Publishers Weekly and Bookpage, and has worked as a freelance editor. She currently blogs about women and drinking for The Huffington Post, and some of her poems can be found on the website Literary Mama.
Born and raised in Bethesda, Maryland, Epstein now lives in Westchester County, New York, with her husband and three children.