Laura Jacobs

Laura Jacobs is a novelist, journalist, and dance critic. The Bird Catcher, her second novel, was published in June 2009, by St. Martin's Press. In July, 2010 Picador released a paperback edition. Her first novel, Women About Town, a Literary Guild selection, was published by Viking Press in 2002, with French and Polish editions, followed by a paperback from Penguin.^[1]

Background and education

Laura Jacobs hails from Chicago, Illinois, and holds a B.A. in English Literature from Northwestern University.

Career

Jacobs has been a staff writer at Vanity Fair since 1995 where she has written award-winning pieces on design, fashion, and the performing arts. She has profiled the mid-century American designers Norman Norell, Charles James, Adrian, and Mainbocher, and has made a specialty of writing about iconic American women, including Emily Post, Gypsy Rose Lee, Lilly Pulitzer, Suzy Parker and Julia Child.

Jacobs began writing dance criticism in Chicago at the Chicago Reader. She has written about dance for The Atlantic Monthly, and held dance critic posts at The Boston Phoenix and The New Leader. Since 1994, Jacobs has been the dance critic at The New Criterion. In 2006 a collection of her New Criterion essays was published by Dance & Movement Press: Landscape with Moving Figures, A Decade on Dance. She also contributes to Ballet Review and Opera News.

From 1987 to 1995, Jacobs was the editor in chief of Stagebill, the national performing arts program magazine whose constituents included Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, Chicago Theater, and orchestras and opera companies around the country. During the late nineties, Jacobs wrote fashion criticism for both Modern Review and The New Republic. She collaborated with the incomparable fashion designer Geoffrey Beene on Beauty and the Beene (Abrams Books, 1999) and edited his last book, Beene by Beene (The Vendome Press, 2005).^[2]

Personal

She is a member of The Linnaean Society of New York, and a co-tender in the Riverside Park Bird Sanctuary. She is married to the writer James Wolcott, and lives on New York’s Upper West Side.

References

1. About Laura Jacobs. Jacketflap.com. Accessed May 19, 2012.
2. Interview with Laura Jacobs. Reading Group Guides. Accessed May 19, 2012.

External links

She maintains a website at http://laurajacobs.info.