Margy Rochlin

Margy Rochlin, winner of the PEN USA West literary award for excellence in journalism, has been a working print and radio journalist for more than two decades.  She’s contributed to national magazines including Esquire, Premiere, Los Angeles magazine, Gourmet, Rolling Stone, Town & Country, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Ladies Home Journal and MORE. For eight years, she was a contributing writer to the Los Angeles Times magazine and won a PEN USA West literary award for excellence in journalism. For the past decade, she was the Los Angeles correspondent for Gourmet magazine, reporting to Ruth Reichl, and she is a regular contributor to the Arts & Leisure section of the New York Times.

Twenty years ago, Margy was contacted by Ira Glass, then a young producer at National Public Radio, who hired her to write and narrate commentaries for NPR’s Morning Edition. So began a fruitful collaboration that included an eight part series on compulsive liars, which morphed into an hour-long radio documentary for WBEZ in Chicago. To this day, Glass frequently cites the Liars series as one of the inspirations for This American Life, where Margy was one of the original contributing editors. Additionally, film director Robert Altman borrowed dialogue from Liars for the Tim Robbins storyline in his celebrated film mosaic of Los Angeles characters, Shortcuts.

Margy collaborated on the New York Times bestselling Untied by Meredith Baxter.