I met Cathy Alter in Georgetown a few months ago, and she is a riot! We really hit it off, but Cathy and I are very different. We're about the same age, but she strikes me more as an artsy intellectual chick who spent the 1980's following the Grateful Dead than a blonde girly girl like me who read Seventeen magazine religiously while listening to the Go Go's at the Country Club pool. I point this out because she doesn't seem like the type of woman who would look to women's magazines for advice--she's too cerebral. Well, several years ago Cathy Alter found herself divorced with all sorts of drama in her life when she decided she needed help. She decided to commit to reading about a dozen women's magazines for a year in hopes of getting her life back on track, and landing a good man. She did just that, and the whole story is told in her book Up For Renewal: What Magazines Taught Me About Love, Sex, and Starting Over. You will adore this book, and you'll learn a lot, too!
Miss A: Where are you from?
Cathy Alter:West Hartford, CT.
Miss A:Where did you go to college?
Cathy Alter: I spent my freshman and sophomore years at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, PA and then transferred to Colgate University in upstate NY. for my last 2 years. In retrospect, I should have taken my junior year abroad and graduated from F&M - it was a much better place for me. I don't like the cold!
Miss A: What did you do before you became a writer?
Cathy Alter: I was in the executive training program at Bloomingdale's, pushing around a lot of rolling racks and managing a bunch of salespeople who were making twice as much money as me on commission.
Miss A: When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer? When and why did you begin writing?
Cathy Alter: I always knew I wanted to be a writer - just didn't know I could actually make a living off of writing. Back in the early 90s, I began writing a monthly fashion column for the West Hartford News. I had to "try out" and submit a sample column to the editor. I have no idea how many people I was up against, but I guess my article was the best (all I remember is writing about plaid) so I was hired. During the few years I wrote the column, I really learned how to write on deadline, how to write to a specific word count, and most importantly, how to work with an editor. Turning in a story every month, seeing my byline in the newspaper, and earning a (meager) paycheck was very exciting.
Miss A: What inspired you to write your first book?
Cathy Alter: Up for Renewal is my second book. And what inspired me was my own life. Which needed to be cleaned up and overhauled in a major way. I was recently divorced and running around town like I was a drunk sorority girl - just misbehaving, dating all the wrong men, and surrounding myself with really bad people. I was spiraling out of control and I thought, this is not the life I want for myself. So I sat down and figured out a way to get that life I wanted. And the solution was, drumroll please - women's magazines!
