Ada Calhoun

Ada Cal­houn is the author of instant New York Times best­seller Why We Can’t Sleep: Wom­en’s New Midlife Cri­sis, an expan­sion of her viral sto­ry for Oprah​.com about the unique cir­cum­stances faced by Gen­er­a­tion X women. One of the Ama­zon Edi­tors’ best non­fic­tion books of 2020, a Goodreads Choice Award Final­ist, and an Indie Next Pick, Why We Can’t Sleep was one of the biggest books of the sea­son accord­ing to the New York Times, Parade, and O magazine.

Cal­houn’s pri­or two non­fic­tion books, both Ama­zon Books of the Month, are the New York City his­to­ry St. Marks Is Dead: The Many Lives of Amer­i­ca’s Hippest Street, a New York Times Edi­tors’ Pick named one of the best books of the year by Kirkus Reviews, the Boston Globe, Orlan­do Week­ly, the New York Post, and the Vil­lage Voice; and the mem­oir Wed­ding Toasts I’ll Nev­er Give, named one of the top ten mem­oirs of 2017 and fea­tured twice on the Today show. The Voice in a cov­er pro­file named her ​“the most impor­tant new voice on Old New York.” Her next book, due out in Spring 2022, is Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me.

Past jobs include crime reporter for the New York Post, fre­quent con­trib­u­tor to The New York Times Book Review, and the­ater list­ings edi­tor for New York mag­a­zine. Cal­houn is also an A‑list ghost­writer, hav­ing col­lab­o­rat­ed on eigh­teen major non­fic­tion books, includ­ing sev­er­al New York Times bestsellers.

She has writ­ten for Time, Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Trav­el­er, the Times Lit­er­ary Sup­ple­ment, The New Repub­lic, Bill­board, Cos­mopoli­tan, The Wash­ing­ton Post, and Red­book; and con­tributed three essays to the New York­er​’s ​“Page-Turn­er” col­umn; and three ​“Mod­ern Love,” and four ​“Lives” columns to the New York Times. Her con­tri­bu­tion to Beast­ie Boys Book was called ​“one of the more effec­tive guest-star turns.”

Her nation­al news report­ing earned a USC-Annen­berg Nation­al Health Jour­nal­ism Fel­low­ship, a Kiplinger fel­low­ship, a CCF Media Award (for her New York Times Mag­a­zine report­ing in Alaba­ma), a Croly Award, and an Ali­cia Pat­ter­son Foun­da­tion fel­low­ship. She has also received a Mac­Dow­ell colony stay and numer­ous res­i­den­cies in the New York Pub­lic Library’s schol­ars’ rooms. 

Co-founder of the read­ing series Sob Sis­ters, she’s spo­ken at con­fer­ences and book fes­ti­vals around the coun­try; and taught pub­lic affairs report­ing at Hof­s­tra Uni­ver­si­ty, cre­ative non-fic­tion at the Rut­gers Sum­mer Con­fer­ence, and mem­oir and pro­pos­al writ­ing at the Mia­mi Book Fair’s Writ­ers Insti­tute, for which she serves as the first 2020 – 21 Emerg­ing Writer Fel­low­ship non­fic­tion men­tor. She lives in New York City.