I am an award-winning freelance journalist based in Brooklyn (formerly based in Providence, R.I.), an erstwhile fact-checker at Esquire, and an Adjunct Lecturer in the English Department at Brooklyn College. I recently graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in creative nonfiction from the New School, where my graduate thesis was a book-length work of narrative journalism about hepatitis C and addiction. This is not a blog, but rather a collection of some of my work.

My favorite stories are about people: people who do unlikely or awe-inspiring things, people with dreams and visions and singular voices, people and communities whose voices are marginalized or forgotten by the popular press. I have a special interest in the criminal justice system and health care for the underserved and disenfranchised, particularly HIV/AIDS. (Before I became a journalist, I worked as an outreach worker and research assistant at an HIV clinic.) I also write news and book reviews, and have been known to write enthusiastically about music, politics, contraception, and goofy antics.

Thanks for stopping by to take a look at my clips.

FORWARD>Fast Forward>Looking for Love in All the Right Books



Looking for Love in All the Right Books

By Beth Schwartzapfel
February 9, 2007

For the involuntarily single and the recently dumped, Valentine’s Day has long been an opportunity to mope, feel sorry for oneself, and lick the wounds that others are salting with their roses and chocolates. However, three of this season’s new books may help keep hope alive. Aimed at the unattached, the single mother and the sexlessly wed, respectively, “Secrets of a Fix-Up Fanatic,” “Single Mom Seeking” and “Mating in Captivity” echo a certain politician’s inspirational (if ultimately unfulfilled) promise: “Help is on the way.”

Susan Shapiro’s “Secrets of a Fix-Up Fanatic: How to Meet & Marry Your Match” (Delta, 2006) is a chatty, readable book full of practical suggestions for those who are looking for their besherts. Her advice boils down to two key tenets: Love yourself first, and then ask someone you know and respect to set you up.

“Single Mom Seeking: Playdates, Blind Dates and Other Dispatches From the Dating World” (Seal Press), by Rachel Sarah, is a memoir of the first few years of a single mom who is actively seeking Mr. Right. Sarah has an infant daughter; her longtime boyfriend, Eric, her baby’s father, disappeared without a trace. Here’s the endearing and steamy, if slightly self-indulgent, story of Sarah finding her way back into the dating world.

In “Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic” (HarperCollins, 2006), couples and family therapist Esther Perel walks readers through the various causes of, and some strategies to combat, matrimonial bed-death. Using real-life examples from her New York City private practice, Perel hypothesizes that “it is not a lack of closeness but too much closeness that impedes desire… desire is fueled by the unknown.”

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