Rachel Cohn (edit name/settings)

I was born on December 14, 1968 in Silver Spring, Maryland. I grew up in the DC area (suburban Maryland), but also spent my childhood summers in Western Massachusetts with my grandparents, so I kind of feel like I am from both places.

From the time I learned how to read and write I was always trying to create stories. I grew up surrounded by books and by family who were educators – the desire and encouragement to write came readily in my household. When I was a kid, I loved books by Judy Blume, Ellen Conford and E.L. Konigsburg. (I loved Judy Blume’s books so much that I used to actively wish I would get scoliosis so I could be like Deenie.) My favorite books were: Harriet the Spy; Deenie; And This Is Laura; Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret; Anything for A Friend; From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler; and Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth. Oh, and anything by Jackie Collins or Sidney Sheldon.

When I was seventeen, I took off for Manhattan to attend Barnard College. I graduated from Barnard with a B.A. in Political Science. I thought I wanted to be a journalist, but it turned out I wanted to make up stories about characters in my head instead of report on actual people’s stories. A few years after graduating from college, I moved to San Francisco and got an administrative job at a law firm to support myself while I began to seriously study and write fiction. I wrote three unpublished novels before the fourth I attempted, Gingerbread, was published. Since then, writing has been a full-time career — and joy.

I currently live in Brooklyn, NY. I don’t have hobbies, unless the pursuit of a great cappuccino counts as one. I spend a ridiculous amount of time organizing my music library and reading books, and hanging out with my two very cool cats, Bunk & McNulty.