ABOUT
My gift as a writer is a well-honed ability to get to the heart of the matter quickly and help people understand why certain stories need to be told.
Ms. Magazine published my first feature in July 1999 about Bina Akhter, a young Bangladeshi woman who became an activist when she refused to wear her veil after an acid attack left her disfigured. Thus began my two-decade-long journalism career during which I contributed to Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Real Simple, and Inc. magazines regularly and as a freelancer to Marie Claire, The New York Times, Vogue, Redbook, Elle, Parade and many more.
Several stories won awards (including an ASME, a National Press Club Award, a Planned Parenthood MAGGIE and a National Women's Political Caucus Merit Award. Others, like this one, went viral.
I wrote my first book, The Kids Are All Right, with my siblings, Amanda, Dan and Diana Welch. It tells the story of losing our parents young from four points of view, and won an ALA ALEX award in 2010. That led to my second book, I Will Always Write Back: How One Letter Changed Two Lives, which published in 2014, and became a New York Times bestseller.
This launched my career as a collaborator, thanks to which I have had the honor of helping extraordinary people put their stories on the page. I always know we’re onto something when I get goosebumps, as I believe the best stories connect us in ways that are deeper than the words that elicit those big feelings.