Terri Laxton Brooks

Terri Laxton Brooks grew up in Reedsburg, Wisconsin, a farm town of one-square-mile surrounded by cornfields. The first in her family to go to college, she majored in journalism and French at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the 1960s. Her first job out of college was as a Metro reporter for the Chicago Tribune. After four years at the Tribune, she moved to New York City, where she became a professor and then chair of the journalism department at NYU for nineteen years. She later served as dean of the Penn State college of communications. The author of three other nonfiction titles—Bittersweet: Surviving and Growing from Loneliness, Women Can Wait: The Pleasures of Motherhood After 30, and Words’ Worth: Write Well and Prosper—Terri has also published hundreds of articles in publications including the Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, Harper's, Redbook, Cosmopolitan, Columbia Journalism Review, and Writer’s Digest. She has a wonderful son who serves as a Lieutenant Commander on Destroyers in the U.S. Navy. She currently lives in New York City.