She was born in Washington D.C the youngest of five children in a Catholic family where her father worked as a police officer.
After graduating in 1973 with a B.A. in English Literature from Catholic University in Washington, DC she began working as a secretary at the Washington Star, and was later promoted to reporter. In 1981 when the newspaper went out of business she took a job at Time magazine. After two years there she left and began working at The Times initially as a metropolitan reporter.
In 1995 she took the place of Anna Quindlen who went to work at Newsweek, and both sometimes write on feminist issues. She is generally considered a liberal and an opponent of President George W. Bush.
External links