Julia Reed grew up in the Mississippi Delta but went off to the Madeira School just outside of Washington, D.C., at 16. As part of the school’s “Wednesday Job” program, she got a job as an intern in Newsweek’s Washington bureau, and stayed -- answering the ...

Julia Reed grew up in the Mississippi Delta but went off to the Madeira School just outside of Washington, D.C., at 16. As part of the school’s “Wednesday Job” program, she got a job as an intern in Newsweek’s Washington bureau, and stayed -- answering the phones, clipping newspapers, and eventually writing stories -- for six more years while also attending college at Georgetown University and American University. Her first big break -- and byline -- at the magazine came when her former headmistress, Jean Harris, shot and killed her lover, Herman Tarnower, the Scarsdale Diet doctor. Today, Julia is again at Newsweek, where she writes dispatches on New Orleans politics as well as the magazine’s new monthly “Food and Drink” column.

Since 1988, she has been a contributor at Vogue, where she has written about everything from canceling her own wedding (and, later, going through with one) to profiles of such political figures as Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Condoleezza Rice. She is also a regular contributor to the New York Times Book Review and to Southern Accents, where she writes a food and entertainment column.

Her book, Queen of the Turtle Derby and Other Southern Phenomena is available from Random House in paperback. In May, St. Martin’s Press will publish Ham Biscuits, Hostess Gowns and Other Southern Specialties: An Entertaining Life (with Recipes), which is a collection of her essays on food for the New York Times Magazine. In July, Ecco Press will publish The House on First Street: My New Orleans Story, a memoir.

She lives in New Orleans -- on First Street -- with her husband, John Pearce, an oil-and-gas lawyer and their dog, Henry, a beagle. She is chairman of the board of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art and serves on the boards of FriendsofNewOrleans.org.