Today I speak with a new member--and a new mb instructor. If you live in New York, check out her Boot Camp for Journalists.

Age: 36

Location: New York, New York

What are you working on now?
Stories for Outside, New York and Marie Claire. A book proposal.

What's the most helpful thing you've learned about writing?
The more you write and report, the better it gets.

What's the worst career advice you ever received?
An editor once told me that I had to get it right on the first try because she didn't have time to help improve it.

As a teacher, how are you preparing for your first mb course?
When I was a student at UC Berkeley J School, a took a class with Clay Felker, the founder of New York magazine on magazine writing. I'm going back through my notes of his wisdom and reading some of the famous stories he had us read that I also plan to hand out to my class. I'm also going to teach the devices as laid out in Tom Wolfe's famous essay The New Journalism. The reason for this is that increasingly even newspapers are look for more scene and color. And, we'll be reading famous pieces such as Gay Talese's profile Frank Sinatra has a Cold and Joan Didion's On Self Respect.