Ada Calhoun

Ada Cal­houn is the author of "Why We Can’t Sleep: Wom­en’s New Midlife Cri­sis," an expan­sion of her viral sto­ry for Oprah​.com about Gen­er­a­tion X women. ​

Cal­houn is also the author of New York City history book "St. Marks Is Dead: The Many Lives of America's Hippest Street," and the memoir "Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give." "Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give" was named one of the top 10 memoirs of 2017 and was called realistic, loving and laugh-out-loud funny by Publishers Weekly.

In addi­tion to writ­ing her own books, Cal­houn has worked as an A‑list ghost­writer since 2009, col­lab­o­rat­ing on four­teen non­fic­tion books for major pub­lish­ers, includ­ing sev­er­al New York Times bestsellers.

She has con­tributed essays to var­i­ous projects, includ­ing Beast­ie Boys Book; her essay there on Gen X wom­an­hood was called ​“one of the more effec­tive guest-star turns.”

As a free­lance jour­nal­ist, she has writ­ten for Time, Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Trav­el­er, O: The Oprah mag­a­zine, the Times Lit­er­ary Sup­ple­ment, The New Repub­lic, Bill­board, Cos­mopoli­tan, and Red­book. She has con­tributed three essays to the New York­er’s online ​“Page-Turn­er” col­umn; and two op-ed, three ​“Mod­ern Love,” and four ​“Lives” columns to the New York Times. Past jobs include crime reporter for the New York Post, fre­quent con­trib­u­tor to The New York Times Book Review, edi­tor-in-chief of the online mag­a­zine Bab​ble​.com, and sec­ond-string the­ater crit­ic for New York magazine.

Her nation­al news report­ing has won mul­ti­ple awards, includ­ing a USC-Annen­berg Nation­al Health Jour­nal­ism Fel­low­ship, Kiplinger fel­low­ship, CCF Media Award (for her New York Times Mag­a­zine report­ing in Alaba­ma), Croly Award, and an Ali­cia Pat­ter­son Foun­da­tion fellowship.

She has taught report­ing and writ­ing at col­leges and work­shops, includ­ing pub­lic affairs report­ing at Hof­s­tra Uni­ver­si­ty, cre­ative non-fic­tion at the Rut­gers Sum­mer Con­fer­ence, and mem­oir at the 2018 Mia­mi Book Fair’s Writ­ers Insti­tute.

She is co-founder of the jour­nal­ists soci­ety and read­ing series Sob Sis­ters and an advo­cate for pub­lic libraries.