Writer or nun: Those were the most memorable results of my high-school career aptitude test. (I have yet to hear the convent’s call.)

My work has appeared on NPR, WBEZ, and Love + Radio as well as in New York Magazine, AAA Living, Parenting, the Chicago Tribune, Crain’s Chicago Business, and the Chicago Reader, among many other outlets. My writing has won awards from the North American Travel Journalists Association and the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. In a past life, I was a travel editor at Rand McNally. In a more recent past life, I was a facilitator for StoryCorps (a national project that inspires people to record each others’ stories in sound).

Oh, and I’m an adjunct lecturer at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications (where I teach courses such as Introduction to Podcasting), as well as an editor-at-large for American Libraries (a magazine of the American Library Association).