CATHERINE NEWMAN has written a gazillion columns, articles, and canned-bean recipes for magazines and newspapers, and her essays have been widely anthologized. She is the author of the memoirs Waiting for Birdy and Catastrophic Happiness, the middle-grade novel One Mixed-Up Night, and the bestselling kids' life-skills books How to Be a Person and What Can I Say? We All Want Impossible Things is her first adult novel. Not, like, adult adult in the porn way. Just, you know, for grown-ups. She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.