Anna Godbersen was born in Berkeley, California, the daughter of a cab driver and a painter. She studied English at college, and has been assistant to the Literary Editor at Esquire magazine since 2003. She writes weekly reviews for various New York magazines, and has written several young adult novels under a pseudonym. Rumours is the long-awaited sequel to her fantastically successful novel, The Luxe.

I was born in Berkeley, California on April 10th, 1980.

My favorite book is The Portrait of a Lady.

My favorite song is The Velvet Underground’s “Pale Blue Eyes.”

My favorite film is Annie Hall.

My most treasured possession is a hand-written book of poems that my dad gave me when I was sixteen, with the inscription “I was saving up for a Corvette, but I came up a little short, so I wrote some poems instead, sort of.”

I started writing around twelve, though it was just a lot of scribbling until recently.

For The Luxe, I was most inspired by reading other things—whether old gossip columns or memoirs or novels, or more recent novels that did something really cool with a historical setting, like E. L. Doctorow’s great Ragtime.

Three tips for becoming a successful author (not that I feel terribly qualified to answer this one): Don’t be afraid to be nosy; embrace t...

I was born in Berkeley, California on April 10th, 1980.

My favorite book is The Portrait of a Lady.

My favorite song is The Velvet Underground’s “Pale Blue Eyes.”

My favorite film is Annie Hall.

My most treasured possession is a hand-written book of poems that my dad gave me when I was sixteen, with the inscription “I was saving up for a Corvette, but I came up a little short, so I wrote some poems instead, sort of.”

I started writing around twelve, though it was just a lot of scribbling until recently.

For The Luxe, I was most inspired by reading other things—whether old gossip columns or memoirs or novels, or more recent novels that did something really cool with a historical setting, like E. L. Doctorow’s great Ragtime.

Three tips for becoming a successful author (not that I feel terribly qualified to answer this one): Don’t be afraid to be nosy; embrace the more compulsive sides of your personality; and always be reading.

Fire Island is my favorite place in the world, because it is small enough to walk everywhere and there are deer and the beach is great and you have to take a ferry to get there.

I don’t really have anything I’d call a hobby, but I do do a lot of yoga.

If I hadn’t been a writer I probably would have become a high school English teacher.