About Me

ABOUT ME
I'm Gretchen Rubin.

I started out as a lawyer. At Yale Law School, I was editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal and won a writing prize. I went on to clerk for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the U.S. Supreme Court.

I had a great experience in law, but I realized that what I really wanted to do was to write. Since making the switch, I’ve published four books. I’m currently working on The Happiness Project. It will hit the shelves in late 2009 (HarperCollins).

Raised in Kansas City, I now live in New York City with my husband and two young daughters.

My only hobbies are reading and writing—and helping other people clean out their closets. I’m left-handed, terrible at sports, tone-deaf, a constant hair-twister, and afraid to drive. I talk to my parents and my sister all the time, and I live around the corner from my in-laws.

EMAIL ME
grubin[at]gretchenrubin[dot com]
(I added brackets to thwart spammers, but just use the usual email format.)

ABOUT MY BOOKS
Most recently, PROFANE WASTE, a collaboration with artist Dana Hoey, examines the question of why owners choose to destroy their own possessions—and take great pleasure in doing so.

My bestselling FORTY WAYS TO LOOK AT WINSTON CHURCHILL and FORTY WAYS TO LOOK AT JFK are brief, unconventional biographies that explore the lives of these two great leaders and, at the same time, examine the limits of biography.

POWER MONEY FAME SEX: A USER'S GUIDE is biting social criticism in the form of a user’s manual.

I’ve talked to Matt Lauer on the Today Show and to Brian Lamb on Booknotes, been profiled in the New Yorker’s Talk of the Town, and done radio shows from the Leonard Lopate Show to Talk of the Nation to Voice of America. I’ve gotten starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus. My first book was optioned by brilliant Hollywood writer Shawn Ryan (creator of The Shield and executive producer of The Unit).

I’ve also written three terrible novels that are safely locked in a desk drawer.