About the
Author
One of the first things written in my baby album (otherwise known as “my parents’ shameless creation of a loosely annotated photo album called MY baby book, but really dedicated to the adorable and show-stealing antics of my wily three older siblings, not that I’m bitter”) is “When we went to the hospital the night before Ariel was born, it was an auspicious night: we even saw shooting stars in the sky!”
I take this as proof that I am not exactly from the planet. No tests have come back proving that I’m an alien, but then again, there aren’t that many tests for that sort of thing. I have several pictures of me from fourth grade that strongly support the alien theory. You be the judge.
I was born on May 3rd, 1980 on an “auspicious” night. I’m not sure who it was auspicious for: my three older siblings, Jordana, Dara and Zach, who would have someone smaller (okay, and cuter) to poke and pinch? My mother, whose own mother told her “three children is enough”? My father, who looks drugged in all the pictures taken at the hospital on my birthday? Let’s just say my birth can only conclusively be said to have been auspicious for me alone and call it a day.
I grew up in Short Hills, New Jersey, a town popularly derided in my high school as “Short Thrills,” which is not that far from the truth, unless you consider the fact that most people in the metropolitan area know the town because of the Short Hills Mall, where “dreams become a reality” (the mall’s catchphrase, not mine). Overall, I can’t complain about my childhood (though that’s never stopped me before). Highlights include but are not limited to: getting in trouble for biting people in nursery school, winning the fourth grade spelling bee and being awarded a sneaker key chain I still use, getting dumped at a Jewish summer camp because my eleven-year-old boyfriend thought my breasts were too small, going to France with my family and being taught the words “I’m stupid” in French by my sister when I thought I was saying “I’m hungry.” Another good one: taking the SAT as a thirteen-year-old to get into an advanced educational summer program, only to meet my mother in the car and ask, “I think it went okay, but what’s an integer?” And lest we forget the happier times: traveling all over the world with my family to wildly interesting places like Russia, Cambodia, Tanzania, and southern New Jersey. Without exaggeration, these trips were the highlight of my childhood. I’ve seen my siblings snarf water out of their nostrils and vomit in more countries than I can count. Few families are close like that.
Upon graduating from Millburn High School, I went to the University of Pennsylvania, which I really and truly loved. While I was there, I wrote a weekly column (on nothing in particular, really) for the school paper The Daily Pennsylvanian for almost two and a half years. I also sang in an a capella group, and I am the first to admit that I auditioned, not once, not twice, but three times. When I lied about the song that I auditioned with saying that it was that very song that “my grandmother sang to my grandfather in a Parisian café during World War II,” I finally got in. (It was a Celine Dion song, for the record.) Over the summers, I had a couple of snazzy internships, at which I mostly complained to other interns about wanting to do something interesting for a change rather than sorting the mail or, at best, using the Brother P-Touch label maker. Not that I’m knocking the label maker—those were some good times. Once you learn the fonts on those babies you can really go to town.
A major in English and a minor in art history, I graduated from Penn as a Benjamin Franklin Scholar, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in May of 2002, blah blah blah.
In the second semester of my senior year, I interviewed for months on end, for many jobs that I really was actually interested in, and then many more in which I had absolutely no interest whatsoever. And yes, in my darkest hour after rejections galore, I actually did call about an ad in the New York Times about becoming an earthworm breeder. And yes, I did win the Meow Mix national contest to become the voice of Meow TV, a TV show geared exclusively towards entertaining cats that aired on the Oxygen Network. (Don’t get too excited—I only read a trivia question during the interstitial, and the show didn’t last past its one pilot. Go figure.) And yes, unfortunately, many of the scenarios in Help Wanted, Desperately are based on my life. I won’t reveal any more than I already have; I’ve already said too much.
Long story short, I finally got a job and, annoyingly, I didn’t really like it. A year later, I quit, got my masters degree in English Education at New York University, and now I am (happily—really!) a teacher in New York City’s public school system. At the end of this gripping, roller-coaster ride of a life story, I am now happily employed, thus proving for the record: there IS a god.
I currently live in New York City with my husband, Wolf (Donny), and am working on my second novel. Stay tuned.
SHAMELESS PLUG: Last, but not least, check out two of my siblings' websites: Dara is also a novelist (run to buy her incredible book, In the Image, NOW!) and her website is www.darahorn.com. And for the artsy folk out there: check out my brother Zach's awesome animation website www.zachhorn.com. He is a phenomenal animator and does amazing freelance work, if you're interested.
