Lucy Kavaler

I have been a professional writer from the time I learned to read and write. My mother sent a poem I had composed to a children’s magazine. The poem was published and I was paid $l. I was six years old. The poem was about snow, which seems prophetic. Once I became a book author, I wrote the novel, Heroes and Lovers, An Antarctic Obsession , and Freezing Point about the effects of cold on living things. Two children’s books, Cold Against Disease and Life Battles Cold followed.

My career as an author took off when a series of articles about debutantes in a Sunday newspaper magazine section was “discovered” by a publisher and led to The Private World of High Society. Sixteen other books followed. The four books I am featuring here are The Astors, A Family Chronicle of Pomp and Power;Mushrooms, Molds, and Miracles,The Strange Realm of Fungi; Heroes and Lovers, An Antarctic Obsession,and The Secret Lives of the Edmonts.

I’ve written biography, historical fiction and non-fiction books. The inspiration for my books often comes from things I see and do. Once in Rome, going by bus to an outdoor performance of the opera, “Aida,” I looked out the window and into the soulful eyes of a camel being taken by cart to appear in the triumphal march. That gave me the idea to have Melanie Edmont ride into the ballroom of her mansion in The Secret Lives of the Edmonts. A cousin who was a space scientist fell into a crevasse while searching for microbes in Antarctica, and this led me to Heroes and Lovers. When kept waiting for an interview with a perfume maker, I picked up a newsletter in the waiting room and was fascinated by a completely unrelated article about algae, and by the time I left, had decided on Green Magic as my next book.

My books appear in hardcover and paperback, on Outstanding Books of the Year lists and are frequently cited as sources, listed in bibliographies and quoted in works by other authors here and abroad. They have been reviewed in all major media, including the Sunday and daily New York Times, Time, New Yorker, Chicago Book World. Excerpts have been featured in many publications, including Cosmopolitan , Reader's Digest, McCall's, Smithsonian, Natural History, New York Post, and in anthologies. Editions are published in England, France, Latin America. Articles on a wide range of topics have appeared in national consumer magazines.

I have been interviewed on a great many television and radio programs. With a reputation as a social historian and expert on 19th-century New York, I am frequently called on to discuss members of society and social issues. When A&E did a Biography program on the Astors, I was consulted on the script and appeared as biographer on the program. I am also called on to speak on the natural science, environmental and health topics that I have written about.

I graduated from Oberlin College, Ohio, magna cum laude, with honors in English. Awarded a Sloan-Rockefeller Fellowship in Science Writing at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, I have been guest lecturer there and at Fordham University. I have held positions as Associate Editorial Director of Physicians World Communications International and as Consultant for The Skin Cancer Foundation.

As a member of PEN/American Center, I am active on its human rights Freedom to Write Committee. I am also a member of the American Society of Journalists & Authors, National Association of Science Writers, American Medical Writers Association and the Authors Guild, and am on the Board of Directors of the Authors League Fund.

Original book manuscripts are maintained in the collections of the Universities of Wyoming, Southern Mississippi and Minnesota.