Frances Lefkowitz writes for love and money, and sometimes both at the same time. She comes from humble urban California beginnings, spent her young adulthood in New England, and has garnered many boast-worthy accomplishments. Still, she is one of those women who feels she has not quite lived up to her potential.
Frances was born in San Francisco to parents who straddled the philosophical and demographic lines between beatniks and hippies. Food stamps, welfare, and free medical clinics played key parts in the life of her family, which moved nine times in seventeen years, mostly within the confines of the city. After twelve years of public school, she attended Brown University on scholarship, earned a degree in anthropology, and then worked in archaeology, palynology (the study of fossil pollen!), catering, the music business, and low-budget films before becoming a magazine writer and editor.
Formerly the senior editor at Body+Soul magazine (now Whole Living), Frances is now the Good Housekeeping book reviewer and a freelance writer and editor. She also teaches at the Sun Magazine’s writing workshops and the Writer in West Marin program. Generally the bridesmaid rather than the bride, her essays have been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes, named as “Notable” in the Best American Essays 2007, and placed as runner-up for a James Beard Award for food writing. Fortunately, there have been some actual awards, too: the Fellowship in Literature from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, The Martin Dibner Award for Maine Writers, and a residency at the Hedgebrook Writing Retreat.
Frances divides her time between Southern Maine and Northern California. Her hobbies are surfing and speaking Spanish, and she especially likes going to Central America, where she can do both at the same time. Her most boast-worthy accomplishment, in fact, might be the eight-foot wave she caught a few years ago in Costa Rica. Buena ola!
