Janice Harayda

Janice Harayda (www.janiceharayda.com) is the author of two comedies of modern manners, "The Accidental Bride" and "Manhattan on the Rocks." She has been a staff writer and editor for Glamour, editorial director of Boston magazine, and the book editor and critic for The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer.

Jan received the first of many honors and awards when she won a photography contest in American Girl magazine in adolescence. Later she attended Girls' State, won first place in the Ohio Excellence in Journalism competition, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and served as a vice president of the National Book Critics Circle.

As a child, Jan spent part of every year living in a two-room shack without running water in the Pine Barrens region of southern New Jersey. You can read about her recent activities by going to her Web site and clicking on the page labeled "My Diary." Her future books include a comedy of baby boomer manners and a travel narrative based on her experiences while dancing with Scottish Country Dance groups throughout Scotland.

"You haven't lived," she says, "until you've done 'The Dashing White Sergeant' with a Scotsman who's had one too many glasses of Glenfiddich."