I grew up in Baltimore, in a tight-knit family of German and Czech immigrants. I got an education in the D.C. punk scene and Riot Grrrl, and I earned a bachelor's degree at Towson State in the Baltimore suburbs, where I studied Virginia Woolf, Black feminism, art history and French.

In the first part of my career, I did journalism in NYC for both Wall Street Journal publications and an alt weekly. I copy-chiefed for almost every magazine that ever existed, and I loved laboring over page proofs. I covered music regularly for Time Out New York and Brooklyn Rail ​for about a decade — a joy. 

I’ve read all 72 Nero Wolfe books. McNally Jackson Books on Prince and Housing Works on Crosby are holy places. NYC is home, but I also spent a decade in Silicon Valley, where I saw coyotes, bobcats and rattlesnakes. Now I'm on the road, uncertain what the next home will be. 

Whatever Happened to Eddy Crane (Hanover Square Press), a memoir about my father's 1987 murder and the years I spent trying to understand it, will be published in 2025.