Ada Calhoun
| Ada Calhoun | |
|---|---|
| Born | Ada Calhoun Schjeldahl March 17, 1976 New York City, New York |
| Occupation | Non-fiction writer, journalist |
| Alma mater |
Stuyvesant High School University of Texas at Austin |
| Period | 1998–present |
| Notable works | St. Marks Is Dead (2015) |
| Spouse | Jerry Neal Medlin (aka Neal Medlyn, aka Champagne Jerry) m. August 22, 2004 |
Ada Calhoun (born Ada Calhoun Schjeldahl, March 17, 1976) is an American non-fiction author. She is the author of St. Marks Is Dead, a history of St. Mark's Place in East Village, Manhattan, New York. She has also been a critic, serving as a frequent contributor to The New York Times Book Review.; a co-author and ghostwriter, having collaborated on three books by Tim Gunn; and a freelance essayist and reporter. A Village Voice profile in 2015 said: “Her CV can seem as though it were cobbled together from the résumés of three ambitious journalists.” She has been collected by libraries worldwide.
Calhoun grew up on St. Marks Place in New York City’s East Village. She is the only child of art critic Peter Schjeldahl and actress Brooke Alderson. They appear as characters in her book St. Marks Is Dead, which she dedicates to them. She has written in The New York Times Magazine about a childhood fascination with the suburbs. As a teenager, she traveled through India and met Mother Teresa. She changed her name in 1998 to avoid comparison to her father.
Her book St. Marks Is Dead was published by W.W. Norton & Company in 2015. She wrote an op-ed that fall that explained her anti-nostalgic feelings about cities and change:
When I asked nostalgic people to name the street’s golden era, they cited a range of years — often falling between 1960 and 1982, but sometimes 1945, or 1958, or 2012. A Vassar student told me that St. Marks Place died with the fairly recent closing of the Starbucks at Cooper Union. “I came back from break,” he said, “and it was gone. We used to hang out there and get cups and fill them with strawberry champagne and feel glamorous. There’s no room for life to be lived there now.” I began to notice a pattern: The years people said the city was at its best almost always coincided with when they themselves were at their hottest.
As a reporter, she has written about imprisoned women in Alabama, the rap star Bobby Shmurda, and the rise of DIY abortions. She has also written personal essays, including two for the New York Times Modern Love column, and four for the New York Times Magazine’s “Lives” column. The New York Times named her essay “The Wedding Toast I’ll Never Give” its 41st most read story of 2015. In fall 2016, W.W. Norton announced that it would publish a collection of related essays in spring 2017, called Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give.
...
Wikipedia