About me....where do I begin?

 

Despite the Russian-French names, I am actually neither. Nor am I a salad dressing. I'm a born and raised New Yorker with Italian and Mexican origins and proudly come from a family of food and music. When I wasn't slicing bread at my maternal family's Italian Market in the Village, I was spending my paycheck at record shops and every so often would stumble across my paternal family's quirky album from the '60s released on ESP-Disk Records.

 

At 13, I discovered the music that continues to define me. At 14, I got kicked out of CBGB for being underage. At 15, I cut off all my hair for my first (and not last) Locks of Love donation. At 16 and 17, I interned for the Beastie Boys' Grand Royal label. At 18, I moved to Olympia WA where I earned three, quite possibly four evaluations from The Evergreen State College before stumbling into adulthood in Los Angeles, and then back to New York to work for Marc Jacobs.

 

In 2009, I followed in the footsteps of my jazz singer grandmother Stella Levitt (née Aguilar) and moved to Paris with no plan and no money. There, I began writing about life in France and publishing work in various publications while nannying, teaching English, and butchering the French language with my New York accent. 

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These days, I've swapped the Parisian hustle for the quieter Seine-et-Marne region (about 50m outside of Paris) where I live with my husband, son, and cat Le Tigre Gris Gris. When I'm not writing or moming, I'm doing Youtube yin yoga, hiking through the forest, breaking a sweat with dance cardio in my laundry room with "my girls" Missy, Janet, and Karen O., I also play a sonic blue 1950s Telecaster and wish there were more hours in the day to learn Italian and to knit. 

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Slanted and Disenchanted is my first novel.

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Thanks for visiting!