Hello! Welcome to The Frisky! Here’s a head-scratcher for you: the last time you had a really awful, awkward date (or a super-fun romp in the sack), did you laugh about it with your girlfriends afterwards?  We sure did.  Which is why it totally boggled our minds that out of all the gazillions of love, sex, dating, and, um, smut sites for women on the Internet, none of them were relatable.  Enter The Frisky. 

Chances are (unless you’re a character in a Sandra Bullock movie), most of your day-to-day thoughts about love and sex revolve around pop culture (“Britney Spears tends to a shrine of Justin Timberlake? What?!”), health (“Is the HPV vaccine right for me?”), politics (“Are all powerful men total horn dogs?”), fashion (“Do sexy, comfortable shoes actually exist?"), dating ("He took me to the pharmacy to pick up his Propecia prescription!"), and travel (“How do you say ‘to the left’ in Italian?”).  That’s why The Frisky tackles all of these facets of life, but with a sexy, carefree, and most of all, relatable twist.

The Frisky is a site is for women everywhere, and we can’t wait to hear your totally ferocious and fiery opinions.  So please register, and feel free to post away on our blog and forums, and shoot us your amazing tips on cool stories.  Interested in contributing to The Frisky? Check out our submissions page.

So once again, welcome to The Frisky. Let’s have some fun!

THE FRISKY STAFF

Name: Amelia McDonell-Parry
Title: The Frisky Editor
Interests: Puppies, salami, yoga, carbohydrates, hip-hop, Patsy Cline, high heels.
Amelia is originally from San Diego, CA but really doesn’t know what all the fuss is about. She went to school in Santa Cruz, where she put herself through college (getting a degree in Journalism along the way) making soy lattes and icky smelling chai tea. After internships at Jane and Interview, she moved to New York and worked for Rolling Stone and Maxim, wrote articles for Nylon, Teen Vogue, Everyday With Rachael Ray, and Marie Claire UK, and rocked the unemployment line twice. She once got botox in the name of journalism, but missed being able to scowl at people. In her free time she enjoys OCD-fueled cleaning binges, young adult and historical fiction, soap operas, practicing yoga on a sporadic basis, praying for Britney, and anything Italian. She lives with her extremely handsome boyfriend...err, fiance… and their amazing dog Lucca who she’s pretty sure is more awesome than all adorable babies combined. She was once engaged but is now attempting to embrace the solitude life of a single girl. Oh yeah, and despite editing this site, she’s a little prudish. Go figure!

Name: Catherine Strawn
Title: The Frisky Assistant Editor
Interests: Peanut butter, books, live music, purple nail polish, Belgian beer, plaid.
Catherine hails from Canton, OH, home of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. (If you ever visit that fine city, you should try a waffle sundae at Milk & Honey.) Catherine went to journalism school at Northwestern and interned at a fraternity magazine during college, but she didn’t learn any of its secrets, unfortunately. She also spent a few months working at newspapers in Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa. Then, she gathered up some courage, moved to New York and started working at Jane, where she stayed until the magazine closed. Some interesting facts about Catherine: She loves purple, doesn’t mind going to movies and concerts by herself if she can’t find anyone to go with her, and is an expert chai tea drinker.

Name: Simcha Whitehill
Title: The Frisky Blogger
Interests: Wearing more gold jewelry than Mr. T, outerspace, satin sheets, dancing with myself, pizza.
Simcha was the last girl at her middle school to mature, which helped her develop hobbies like reading and writing.  When she was lucky 13, she went with her after-school academic group on a field trip to Tennessee to compete in a national nerd-off. Although her team lost, what she gained was invaluable: a day at Dolly Parton’s dreamy theme park, Dollywood. After years of pleading with God for a righteous rack, Simcha decided to pray to the cup fairy of country music and ask for her blessing.  By the time summer rolled around, her patron saint had miraculously answered her prayers. She was a D, from and for Dolly. Now, Simcha always tries to put herself in the right place at the right time. As soon as she turned 18, she moved to New York City.  A graduate of NYU, she has written for Pokémon, Nickelodeon, Fangoria, Dame Magazine, Central Park Media, and Jane, all the while showing more cleavage than the Grand Canyon.

Name: Emily Poster
Title: The Frisky‘s Designer & Photo Editor
Interests: Sewing, polaroids, cute dresses, dark beer and dive bars, big rings, going to see live music.
Emily is a great designer, but doesn’t think much of her writing skills, so here are Five Facts About Her:
1. She is from the Pine Barrens in New Jersey.
2. If she was stuck on a deserted island she would want to have her cat, a camera, and a copy of The Cheese Monkeys.
3. She really, really wants a Formica table.
4. Her favorite band is Sleater-Kinney and she is terribly sad they broke up. But she did get to go to their third last show, yay!
5. She is very opinionated about typography. Comic Sans Serif should not exist.

Name: Annika Harris
Title: The Frisky Editorial Assistant
Interests: High heels, cats, history, tattoos, jewelry, trivia, reality TV, Home Shopper’s Network
Annika was born and raised in the Bronx and is one of the borough’s staunchest defenders. She discovered her passion for journalism after writing a personal account about a serious illness she endured while in her early 20s. (Don’t worry she’s cured now.) After college, Annika was accepted into the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism’s first class, where she tried in vain to get fashion journalism accepted as a valid form of writing. In an effort to expand her interests, she interned at the FDNY press office and Entertainment Weekly. Annika has written for Beyond Race magazine and website, The Bronx Journal, Entertainment Weekly and the FDNY’s ViewPoint. In her free time she enjoys watching movies or mindless television and giving makeovers. One of her clients found love and was recently married after Annika made him over. Annika loves food, but hates cooking, so she surrounds herself with people who love to feed her.

THE FRISKY REGULARS

Name: Wendy Atterberry
Interests: Espresso brownies, cruising eBay for cute vintage dresses, searching for the perfect shade of pink nail polish, beer gardens, living room dance-a-thons, and singing her karaoke repertoire, which includes “Midnight Train to Georgia,” “Daniel,” “Dream a Little Dream,” and anything Patsy Cline.
Wendy grew up in Japan, Korea, and Germany, and recently moved to Manhattan after a seven-year stint in Chicago. She moved for a boy, but thinks there could be worse reasons to move to New York. She and the boy live very happily together in Hell’s Kitchen with two cats named Simone and Miles. Wendy has a blog like everyone else and writes daily for Nerve’s product blog, Modern Materialist. Her favorite color is green.

Name: The Bad Girlfriend
Interests: Bargain shopping, liquid dinners, Guitar Hero, ponies, CSI, showtunes.
The Bad Girlfriend is a New York transplant from Los Angeles, and has been a BG since she got her first boyfriend in 8th grade. She’s now in her late-twenties, and still can’t seem to settle down with or be sweet to one nice boy. “Sometimes I think I’m a really horrible person with all of my cheating and lying,” she says. “But then I think, who cares? Women – my friends and sisters – are my real peeps. Boys are necessary for sex (though not always!), and OK to have fun with, but my loyalty lies in my girls.” We sort of suspect that BG may actually be a jerky man stuck in the body of a really cute chick, but her stories make us laugh anyway.

Name: Teri Tsang Barrett
Title: The Frisky Chef: “Hot Outta The Oven”
Interests: Flat boots, light fixtures, Chinese history, beauty products that contain oatmeal and cute machine-washable undies.
Teri develops recipes for the site and specializes in perfecting thin-crust pizzas. She is the Food Editor at Every Day with Rachael Ray magazine. Her must-haves in the kitchen include Sriracha Chili Sauce, a Kyocera Handheld Ceramic Slicer and fennel. When not eating, she tries to practice yoga and walk her beagle George. Her past experiences include working in the test kitchens of The Martha Stewart Show and writing for Rolling Stone, Budget Living, The Book L.A. and SOMA magazine. She is a graduate of the Institute of Culinary Education and the University of California at Berkeley.

Name: Alina Berd
Title: “Wanderlust” Columnist
When Wanderlust’s Alina Berd is traveling, she always looks for an adventure – sometimes her escapades involve guys. In her dreams, she hopes to one-day return to Tokyo with someone of the opposite sex who will feed her too much sushi and take her on an unlimited shopping spree.

Name: Annemarie Conte
Title: “The Monogamist” Columnist
Annemarie Conte’s life occasionally feels like the movie Moonstruck because she lives like an old-school Italian family, with her brother, 96-year-old grandfather and boyfriend all under one roof. But that would probably make her Cher and her fiance Nic Cage, so maybe not. Either way, the whole thing creates for some, uh, interesting situations, many of which you’ll probably read about in her column, The Monogamist. Or you can check her out on annemarieconte.com.

Name: Elle Dennebaum
Title: The Frisky Community Moderator
Interests: Online shopping, Wii & XBOX 360, cooking elaborate dinners, emo shoegazer music, sour candy, wine.
Elle is a native New Yorker who grew up in the Bronx and spent her formative high school years as a goth/alterna chick cutting class in the East Village with her BFF.  She spent 3 years at SUNY New Paltz learning about the finer points of Radio & TV Communications before buckling down and going back to NYC to finish up at Pace University with a degree in CIS.  She’s been involved with online communities since AOL 1.0 debuted way back in the day and has run communities at Bolt, BBC America and several niche sites.  Nowadays she enjoys cooking, gaming, traveling to remote regions of the world and plans on visiting every continent at least once.  Her dog is a maniac and her partner in crime (aka her husband) is as snarky as she is, which makes for interesting (although cutting) conversation at the dinner table.

Name: John DeVore
Title: Mind Of Man Columnist
John DeVore co-hosts DeVore and Diana on Maxim Radio, Sirius Channel 108, 7 to 11PM EST Monday through Friday. He has written for Maxim, The New York Sun, Cracked Magazine, Comedycentral.com, Nymag.com, and for the award winning political parody Whitehouse.org. He’s appeared on G4TV, CNN, Vh1, and Fox News.

Name: Wendy Felton
Interests: Spies, spiral notebooks, caffeinated beverages, punctuation
Wendy is a writer and editor based in Los Angeles. She blogs about fashion magazines at GlossedOver.com. When not reading one of the twenty-plus periodicals that make their way into her home each month, Wendy’s scoping out Googie architecture and snapping photos. She spends entire Saturdays during the fall doing nothing but watching college football. Future goals include moving to Paris and learning to ride a bike. Right now, she’s probably drinking Diet Dr. Pepper.

Name: Erin Flaherty
Title: Love 101 Columnist
Erin Flaherty is a freelance writer, and Editor at Yahoo’s Shine, and former Jane magazine Senior Editor. She’s waxed philosophic about sex, beauty, fashion, pop culture, travel and art to publications such as Allure, Elle, Marie Claire, Details, ID, Page Six Magazine, Men’s Fitness and Ladies’ Home Journal. She’s been a talking head on VH1, Full Frontal Fashion, E!, a bunch of random news and radio shows, and quoted as an expert in WWD, The New York Times and New York. If all of this sounds really serious, please keep in mind that her hobbies include freestyle Frito pie making, traveling the far reaches of the globe to learn about foreign beauty products, holding “beer tastings” at her house, and that’s about it. She spends her time between New York City and Providence, Rhode Island, where her true love is finishing grad school.

Name: Lindsay Goldenberg
Title: The Frisky Sexpert and Relationship Novice
Interests: Owning a pre-fab home, basketball, puppies, burlesque, monkeys!
Lindsay once dreamed of being an art history major. Then she met with a college counselor and they told her she should try “journalism” instead. Since that horrible day, she’s gone on to work for such publications as Rolling Stone, Teen People, and Maxim.com, where she co-created and wrote the popular “Easy Sex” column. She currently runs a new parenting website, and lives in Brooklyn.

Name: Lori Harfenist
Title: The Frisky Videographer
For the past 7 years, Lori Harfenist has been producing, hosting, editing, posting, pimping, and running “The Resident” for both TV and the Internet. Because this work is an ultra-massive source of income, Lori produces, edits, and hosts video content for corporate and network clients just for fun. Over the years, she has worked with great people at companies like E! Networks, DirecTV, CNN, FoxNews, Atari, Nike, UGO, Macy’s, and Fun Little Movies. Lori graduated cum laude with a BA in Communications: Writing for the Media, from Pace University in New York City, and she attended the School for Film and Television.

Name: Chelsea Kaplan
Chelsea Kaplan is the Deputy Editor of TheFamilyGroove.com, a segment host on XM Radio’s women’s channel, covering fashion, beauty, parenting and relationship-oriented topics and regular contributor to Self and the dating and relationships sections of Match.com, MSN.com and AOL.com. She and her husband of nearly 7 years recently located from Manhattan to Washington, D.C., where she’s developed an affinity for The Cheesecake Factory, driving an SUV and shopping at Target. Despite having one son, 2 ½, and another due to arrive in March 2008, she still can’t believe she’s somebody’s mother. To temper her angst, she writes a blog, The Momtourage, which can be found at chelseakaplan.com.

Name: Judy McGuire
Title: Dating Don’ts Columnist
Interests: Crime, real-estate porn, crochet, the Wii Fit, all the Law & Orders, Polaroid cameras, small furry animals (except ferrets), Richard Belzer, and the Clash
Jersey-born Judy is the author of How Not to Date (Sasquatch Books), and for the past eight years, has been writing a funny sex and love advice column called “Dategirl” for the Seattle Weekly. Though she doesn’t go in for anything more intoxicating than a couple beers, she spent four years working at High Times, and another three years in the field working as an ethnographer on an anthropological study of heroin use in NYC (translation: hung out with junkies and got paid for it). Remarkably, she discovered that heroin addicts were less irritating than potheads, but only marginally so. She’s written for a variety of anthologies, magazines and websites and can be found blogging at here.

Name: Leigh Raines
Title: The Frisky Intern
Interests: Sleeping, red wine, french fries, reading, writing, Gossip Girl, eBay.
Leigh was born and raised in New York (well, in the suburbs just outside Manhattan). She was a Journalism major at Lehigh University and senior year had a monthly column entitled “Between the Sheets.” The first people she sent her columns to every time they got published were her family members, which is a lot considering she’s the youngest of five kids—yes, five, all more outspoken than the next. She can honestly say that her 65-year old-father gives better relationship advice than any therapist. Picking up a freshly printed magazine is her drug, and she’s an anti-traditionalist who finds a lot of things cheesy—that’s why she refused to let her mom take a picture of her putting the boutonniere on her boyfriend at senior prom. Lastly, she thinks that Julian McMahon is the sexiest man on earth. If you don’t know who he is, she suggests you start watching Nip/Tuck immediately.

Name: Lesley Savage
Title: We See Chick Flicks Columnist
Interests: Travel, horses, food fit for a thirteen-year-old boy, movies, lounging.
Lesley was born in San Francisco, CA, attributing to her “laid back” demeanor. She attended college in middle-of-nowhere Pennsylvania at Bucknell University, where she both mingled with the Amish and learned the true meaning of Christmas. She also holds a master’s degree in Journalism from Boston University, which was basically good for getting her magazine internships well past the internship-age. She has worked at two now defunct men’s magazines Giant and Sync and has contributed Elle, NYmag.com and Men’s Journal. After spending two years toiling in the music department of Rolling Stone she recently took an Associate Editor position at Entertainment Weekly. Lesley lives in the East Village with her “witty” advertising copywriter husband, and two cats, which she secretly despises. She loves chick-flicks ­ especially the bad ones, and has made it her mission to help rejuvenate the seemingly defunct career of Freddie Prinze Jr.

Name: Kiki T
Title: Astrosexologist
Interests: Travel, writing, shopping, vegging, friends
Born a sexy double Scorpio, the one and only Astrosexologist Extraordinaire Kiki T. began her astro adventures at the tender age of 11. Brewing with precociousness and perversion, obsession led Kiki to astrology. In dire love with fellow Scorpio, Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran, Kiki was convinced he was her soul mate. Astrology confirmed their compatibility and Kiki got hooked. Following those years, Kiki got off her Simon Le Bon obsession, mastered the finer points of this starry maze of manipulation and sampled the smorgasbord of zodiac sexual styles, perfecting her expertise and creating the term astrosexology. Her devilish observations are all contained in her astral opus: The Celestial Sexpot’s Handbook (Warner Books). If you like dick, get it. It’s guaranteed to satisfy.

THE FRISKY CONTRIBUTORS

Name: Jessica Bartlett
Interests: Drinking beer with the girls, sucking at Scrabulous, singing karaoke.
Jessica Bartlett is a freelance writer living in New York City. When she’s not frequenting new restaurants and ordering slabs of prime medium-rare meats, she’s in search of the perfect karaoke bar—preferably one that’s close to her Upper East Side apartment. She’s also been known to dispense her fair share of relationship advice after a couple of Ketel One martinis and will gladly match-make if given the chance.

Name: Catherine Bassett
Interests: Yoga, cooking, learning to knit, gardening, volunteering, arguing with political bloggers and lots of iced coffee.
Lifelong Boston resident and mildly obsessive sports fan (which is just so rare around here), for many years, Catherine has toiled in the marketing departments of various technology companies.  These days however, she spends most of her time trying to figure out how to make a living out of her desire to do nothing but travel, cook and sleep in her hammock.

Name: Harley Block
Interests: Sports, food, gradually learning how to cook, sneakers, street wear, technology, XBOX Live, Coke Zero, watches, music.
Harley grew up on the mean streets (by mean, we mean suburban) of Providence, RI. He moved to NYC in 2000 to attend St. John’s University and so began his transformation into a New Yorker. After studying overseas in London, he worked for HBO Sports and Taylor Global. He is now with the technology practice of Edelman, where he works on everything from the launch of Grand Theft Auto IV on XBOX 360 to Internet entertainment studios. He is a self-described sneaker connoisseur and notes Complex Magazine as his preferred reading material. He admittedly overspends on eating at restaurants but doesn’t see that changing any time soon.

Name: Lena Chen
Interests: Stealing friends from Dorothy, sushi, seducing tech geeks, blogging.
Lena Chen is a freelance writer and the blogger behind SexandtheIvy.com, which chronicles her experiences boozing, schmoozing, and floozing her way through the Ivy League. Currently a third-year sociology major at Harvard, Lena is the kind of girl who will try anything once and try anything on, which makes her hazardous to both insurance and credit card companies. Born in San Francisco and raised in Los Angeles, she has contributed to The Boston Globe Magazine, Hustler Magazine, CollegeHumor.com, and thePEEQ.com. She likes her men the way she likes her university: well-endowed.

Name: Leonora Epstein
Interests: Easy-bake ovens, making out, sweet sixteens, frozen margaritas on Saturday afternoons, breakdancing.
Leonora spent her teenage years growing up in a Bed and Breakfast in Massachusetts. While these years set her back significantly in therapy, they will probably serve as the basis of her first bestselling novel. She attended Smith College (all ladies!), where she discovered, much to her dismay, that she wasn’t a lesbian. There, she completed a double major in French and American Studies, which means that now she has no applicable skills, save for expounding on the cultural significance of ripped jeans in French. She’s 22. Which naturally means she’s a bit of a mess, but endearingly so. Her work has appeared on DailyCandy.com, Boinkology.com, and Cosmopolitan.com.

Name: Jacqueline Frankel
Interests: Waving at firemen, Anna Nicole Smith, safe sex, cheap champagne, strip Twister.
Jacqueline Frankel moved to New York City, the dating capital of the world, in the hopes of being a cougar, err, bachelorette for the rest of her life. Inspired by Samantha from Sex in the City, when it comes to climbing the ladder and men, she’s got blonde ambition. Jax has been seen in everything from Lastnightsparty.com to the Sunday Style Section of the New York Times. While she loves to fall head over heels, Jax considers her greatest achievement to be her ability to walk over subway grates in stilettos.

Name: Lauren Gitlin
The Gits, as she’s known in some circles, has written for Rolling Stone, Spin, Nerve, The Village Voice and Jane and is currently unleashing her inner Fran Leibowitz on TV and movies for the website Television Without Pity. Her main interests include cheese, tree houses, sea mammals, Finno-Ugrian culture, the anthropological study of breakfast, excellent posture and her cat, Pippi Longstocking.

Name: Etan Harmelech
Interests: Basketball, Lost, Tom Wolfe, Cliff bars, Power bars, Odwalla bars, Adriana Lima, homemade beef jerky
Etan thinks Chicago is way better than New York because the former is a bastion of Midwest sensibility that boasts alleys in which people can discard their trash cleanly and safely while the latter allows the garbage to pile up on the curb for the pigeons to enjoy. Etan loves to work out and has illegally snuck into gyms on three continents to avoid paying exorbitant entry fees. He recently switched from skim to 1 percent milk and can really taste the difference.

Name: Shanna Howard
Interests: Porches, dance pockets, photography, swimming, the outdoors, travel, Netflix, arts & crafts, wine, sushi
A native Texan, Shanna grew up just outside of Dallas. She moved to Austin to attend The University of Texas, where she’s stayed since, minus a stint working as a freelance writer and Web editor in Prague. Her degrees in journalism and Czech come in less handy these days for her Webmaster job, but she is still a compulsive copy editor and will speak Czech badly after a couple of beers. She’s contributed to The Prague Post, Texas Music Magazine, and Citysearch, among others. In her spare time, you can find her out and about with her boyfriend and their two rescue doggies or relaxing on a patio or porch in South Austin… Or if she’s really lucky, off traveling or SCUBA diving in Mexico, which she’d rather be doing at all given times. Though, these days, she spends most of her time wondering why the hell she was crazy enough to sign up for triathlon training.

Name: Michael Kelly
Interests: Crossword puzzles, taking pictures, chuck taylors, playing music, marmite, the noble penguin, sketch comedy and Sunday brunch.
Originally from Allentown, PA, Michael went on to study media production in Philadelphia. After freelancing in the world of television production, Michael moved to New York where he currently is a hair care art production manager and freelance writer. Despite his ownership of not one but two cats and nerdy disposition, Michael knows what’s flying with fashion.

Name: Rachel Kramer Bussel
Interests: Books, babies, cupcakes, greeting cards, high heels, fishnets, feminism, chick flicks and silly teen romcoms, Scrabble, trivia.
Rachel (www.rachelkramerbussel.com) is a New York City-based writer, editor and blogger focusing on sex and relationships, with occasional forays into publishing and food. She’s edited lots of dirty books, including Spanked: Red-Cheeked Erotica and Dirty Girls: Erotica for Women, and runs the NYC reading series In The Flesh. She’s been in more long distance relationships than same city ones, has never done online dating, has a weakness for bald men and curvy women, and is generally a huge dork. She used to drink 5-6 liters of Diet Coke a day, but quit in October 2007. She appeared on The Martha Stewart Show to talk about her true love, cupcakes, and co-runs the mouthwatering blog Cupcakes Take the Cake.

Name: Natalie Krinsky
Natalie Krinsky is a screen and television writer as well as a general observer of life, attempting to live it up in Los Angeles. Hailing from New York City, she graduated from Yale University in 2004 with a degree in History, which has qualified her to do very little of import. While at Yale, Natalie wrote the column “Sex and the Elm City” for the Yale Daily News and subsequently published a book titled Chloe Does Yale in 2005.

Name: Brock Mahan
Brock Mahan is a freelance TV writer whose handiwork can be generally be found on three-digit channels, although he occasionally gets stuff on basic cable stalwarts like VH1, Bravo and the Discovery Channel. He also hosts Fist City, a weekly comedy show every Thursday night at 9 PM on East Village Radio. When Brock Googles his name, all the results relate to him in some way, leading him to believe that he is the only Brock Mahan in the world. This makes him feel rather lonely.

Name: Molly Niendorf
Interests: Nachos, wine, skiing, crossword puzzles, cuddling, game nights, color-coded lists, travel
Originally from northern California, Molly currently calls Portland, Oregon home and is trying to acclimate to the cloudy skies.  You’ll find her searching for the city’s best brownie, going on hikes, or blogging from her bed.  On her next birthday, she’ll turn twenty-four for the third year in a row just because she says so.  Molly is an only child and grew up believing that because I say so is a valid explanation (it’s not).  With a degree in Communication Studies from Northwestern University and an MFA in Fiction from Antioch University Los Angeles, Molly dreams of making it big as a writer, but realizes she’s probably due for a more realistic five-year plan.  She’s been a third grade teacher, financial analyst, and a surprisingly satisfied temp worker, and sometimes, very fleetingly, she misses Las Vegas, where she lived for two years (without acquiring a gambling addiction).  Word games and desk supplies are her weaknesses—she can’t get enough.  And if you cook for her or send her a snail mail letter, she’ll be smitten.

Name: Jocelyn Nubel
Interests: Neon nail polish, whiskey, David and Amy Sedaris, communal living, hand holding, karaoke, Chris Brown
Jocelyn hails from the glorious land of Long Island, home to strip malls and rich kids, but she insists that’s nothing like her hometown.  She went to NYU where she studied broadcast journalism and spent a summer working in TV, which sent her running scared into the warm and cuddly arms of public relations.  She’s since done some freelance writing for Women’s Health magazine, including authoring a blog related to fitness where she wrote mostly about boys.  She lives in Manhattan with two friends and an incredibly entitled cat named Casey-Doris, (Doris when she’s nasty), and is currently co-authoring a book of humor essays about the trials and tribulations of interpersonal relationships.

Name: Maridel Reyes
Interests: Red meat, stationary, cooking, decorating my tiny apartment, scotch.
Maridel grew up in sunny Orange County, CA--and yes, it’s just like the TV show. As a student at Northwestern University, she investigated miscarriages of justice for the Medill Innocence Project in Harvey, IL, and learned how to shoot a rifle and defend herself with a ballpoint pen. In her past lives, Maridel has been a librarian, a barista, and a candy striper. She likes to stays up all night reading food blogs.

Name: Andrea Rosen
Interests: Zagat’s Guides, Boggle, Collegiate A Cappella Groups
Despite her love of rotaries, anti-Yankees sentiments, and surplus Dunkin’ Donuts franchises, Andrea left her home state of Massachusetts to pursue a writing career in New York City.  By day, she manages Yourlocal.com and reads the internet; by night, she eats take-out and re-watches old episodes of “Lost”.

Name: Lucile Scott
Interests: Gallivanting, things involving twang, David Bowie, Edward Scissorhands, Harry Potter.
Lucile Scott is a contributing writer at POZ, the nation’s leading magazine about HIV and AIDS, and has travelled to destinations including Jamaica and India to write articles about the global epidemic. Her work has been featured on many a blog and she has contributed to The UTNE Reader, PlanetOut.com, Gay.com, and Nymag.com. Her first full length play Monroe Bound was performed in NYC this summer. She also really likes puppies and burritos.

Name: Raven Snook
Raven Snook is a writer, performer, diva and mom with an Ethel Merman-esque voice and Elvira-like boobs. During the day, she works as the managing editor of a parenting site and pens freelance articles on the sly (Time Out New York, TV Guide, The Village Voice, Heeb, The New York Post). At night, she takes care of her daughter, then sneaks out of the house to host various burlesque shows, including Starshine Burlesque, Le Scandal and the all-Jewish revue Kosher ChiXXX, which she also co-created. Raven has also written a number of one-woman shows, including How I Became a Drag Queen Trapped in a Woman’s Body, told stories at The Moth and the Heeb Storytelling Series, and appeared on The Maury Povich Show as a “female female impersonator.” Check out her Web site, or plug her name into most any social networking site if you want to say hello.

Name: Andrew Steinthal
Title: Token Straight Guy
Interests: Snowboarding, fountain Coca-Cola, ‘90s mall punk.
Contrary to his Scarsdale, NY upbringing, Andrew somehow avoided becoming a doctor, lawyer or banker. He currently lives in downtown NYC’s East Village with his grade school teacher girlfriend, but often returns to “The Dale” to ogle I.J.C.’s (Interchangeable Jappy Chicks) and to stop by The Candlelight for buffalo wings. A graduate of Ithaca College, Andrew majored in Television/Radio, minored in Speech Communication and mastered the game of beer pong. He loves his job running the PR “department” (himself + interns) of Warner Music’s Independent Label Group. He’s also the Music Editor for the fashion magazine metro.pop. An obsessive sports fan, when Andrew isn’t watching games he can usually be found in a corner checking fantasy stats on his blackberry. The best day of his life will be when the Knicks finally win a championship and he can turn to his great-great-grandson and tell him, “it was all worth it.” Andrew spends an obscene amount of time organizing his iTunes and building perfect playlists for all occasions. If he were single, he’d like to believe he’d be as big a pimp as Hank from Californication, his all-time favorite TV character.

Name: Christiana Yiallourides
Interests: Pad thai, peach iced tea, salt & vinegar chips, Greek dancing, swing dancing, swinging (on swings), and, sadly, Facebook-stalking.
Christiana Yiallourides barely spoke to anyone until she was four years old, and now apologizes to her friends for speaking too much, usually in the form of highly detailed stories. Armed with an education from NYU, editorial internships at Marie Claire and iVillage, and freelance work around the Web, she aims to convert her unhealthy dependency on men into a lucrative writing career. Although she’s been criticized for it, she finds no fault in drawing on her love life for nearly every piece of writing she creates, whether it’s fiction or non-fiction. She does not know how to ride a bike, blow a bubble, whistle or swim. She can, however, pull out a Band-Aid, tissue or white Tic-Tac from her purse whenever anyone needs one. If you see her without two rings on her fingers and a watch on her wrist, something’s wrong.

Name: Yasmin Zar
Interests: Sunglasses, technology, cereal, vintage, reality television, white wine.
A native New Yorker and St. Johns’s University alum, Yasmin spends her days working at a men’s magazine and her nights blogging about fashion. She passes half of her free time shopping, and the other half crying about the debt her shopping habit has put her in.  While she loves the hustle and bustle of NYC life, she dreams of one day living in a lazy California surf town with her dog, a Maltese named Max.