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Admired and best-selling authors offer advice and discuss their latest books.
Summer Reads
Rachel Dodes and Lauren Mechling, The Memo
Olivia Muenter, Such A Bad Influence
Diane Richards, Ella
Hosted by Ilana Levine, Actress and Podcaster, Little Known Facts with Ilana Levine
Rachel Dodes is a freelance culture writer and a regular contributor to Vanity Fair, and her work has also appeared in Town & Country and Elle, among other publications.
Lauren Mechling has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Slate, The New Yorker online, and Vogue, where she wrote a regular book column. She's worked as a crime reporter and metro columnist for The New York Sun, a young adult novelist, and a features editor at The Wall Street Journal. A graduate of Harvard College, she lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children. She is currently a senior editor at The Guardian US.
Olivia Muenter is a writer and cohost of Bad on Paper, a weekly podcast about books, life, and everything in between. Previously she was a senior fashion and beauty editor at Bustle.com. Olivia's work has appeared in Refinery 29, HuffPost, Glamour.com, Philadelphia magazine, Byrdie, Apartment Therapy, and more. Such A Bad Influence is her first novel.
Diane Richards is the Executive Director of the Harlem Writers Guild and a writer, playwright, music producer. She is also a singer who cut her own album in the 1980s and performed backup for Whitney Houston. Like Ella, Diane won a talent competition that launched her career—singing Watch What Happens, a song made famous by Ella Fitzgerald. She lives in New York City.
As an actress, Ilana Levine has performed on stage and screen to critical acclaim. On Broadway, Ilana is best known to musical theater fans for her comedic turn as "Lucy Van Pelt" in the Broadway revival of, You're A Good Man Charlie Brown. Ilana also starred in the Broadway productions of Jake's Women, Wrong Mountain and The Last Night Of Ballyhoo. She has performed on the Tony Awards. Her ability to portray characters with raw honesty, humor, and pathos, has sustained her career as an actress for over 25 years. She first appeared on the scene in the HBO series Tanner ’88 directed by Robert Altman and quickly was plucked by Vanity Fair journalist James Wolcott as an “up and comer to watch.” Seinfeld fans recognize her from the infamous episode "The Contest." She has appeared in many television shows and films including Divorce, Law and Order, Tanner on Tanner, Damages, The Job, Cashmere Mafia, Confessions of a Shopaholic, Kissing Jessica Stein, Gigantic, Ira and Abby, Failure to Launch, The Nanny Diaries, Friends With Kids and Five Flights Up. As a voice over artist she has done commercials and audio books. For the past three years Ilana has been cited as a “Twitter Influencer To Follow”. She resides in Brooklyn, New York with her husband, actor Dominic Fumusa, her two children, and their dog, Lola.