Jeanne Marie Laskas is the author of six books, including her latest, Hidden America (Putnam, 2012), as well as the award-winning trilogy of memoirs: Fifty Acres and Poodle (Bantam Dell, 2000), The Exact Same Moon (Bantam Dell, 2003), and Growing Girls (Bantam Dell, 2006). Most of her longform journalism now appears in GQ, where she is a correspondent writing about everything from concussions to migrant workers to hit-men. Formerly a contributing editor at Esquire, and a weekly columnist (“Significant Others”) at The Washington Post Magazine, she has been writing for national magazines for twenty years, with work appearing in The New York Times Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine, O: The Oprah Magazine, Allure, Ladies Home Journal, and many others. She is the voice behind Reader’s Digest’s “Ask Laskas,” where she dispenses wisdom with zero authority but plenty of common sense. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including Best American Magazine Writing 2008 and Best American Sportswriting 2000, 2002, 2007, 2008, 2011 an