Stabiner, Karen

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Stabiner, Karen

PERSONAL: Married Larry Dietz; children: Sarah. Education: Attended Syracuse University for one year; University of Michigan, B.A.

ADDRESSES: Home—Santa Monica, CA. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Little, Brown & Company, 1271 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Journalist and writer. Santa Barbara News and Review, cofounder and art editor; worked for various publications in Los Angeles, CA, including Mother Jones and New West; freelance writer.

WRITINGS:

Limited Engagements (novel), Seaview Books (New York, NY), 1979.

Courting Fame: The Perilous Road to Women's Tennis Stardom, Harper & Row (New York, NY), 1986.

Inventing Desire: Inside Chiat/Day; The Hottest Shop, the Coolest Players, the Big Business of Advertising, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1993.

To Dance with the Devil: The New War on Breast Cancer, Delacorte Press (New York, NY), 1997.

(With Piero Selvaggio) The Valentino Cookbook, photographs by Patricia Williams, Villard (New York, NY), 2001.

All Girls: Single-Sex Education and Why It Matters, Riverhead Books (New York, NY), 2002.

My Girl: Adventures with a Teen in Training, Little, Brown (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor to periodicals, including Mother Jones, Vogue, O, Los Angeles, Travel and Leisure, Gourmet, and NewWest.

SIDELIGHTS: California-based writer Karen Stabiner earned a B.A. in English with honors from the University of Michigan, then went on to found the Santa Barbara News and Review, a weekly newspaper for which she was the arts editor and film critic for four years. She moved to Los Angeles and worked for a number of publications before deciding to become a freelance writer, focusing primarily on health, women's and family issues, and food. Stabiner is the author of several books on topics ranging from advertising to sports to education, as well as a novel, Limited Engagements.

Stabiner's roots in journalism are reflected in the majority of her books. In Inventing Desire: Inside Chiat/Day; The Hottest Shop, the Coolest Players, the Big Business of Advertising she delves into the world of a major advertising agency that was known for its cutting-edge, hip style in the late 1980s, but underwent a radical change in fortune when several major clients took their business elsewhere. Stabiner spent a year at the Venice, California offices, speaking with employees and observing them at work. Joanne Kaufman, in a review for People, called the book "a riveting account of the firm's transition from halcyon days to, so to speak, Halcion days."

To Dance with the Devil: The New War on Breast Cancer addresses the political machinations behind advances in medical treatment, focusing specifically on how legislation and political positioning affect progress in the fight against breast cancer. Stabiner followed University of California, Los Angeles surgeon Susan Love, observing her methods and the ways in which they affected her patients. In an article for Women's Review of Books, Lundy Braun commented that "Stabiner's book is an interesting one, but her narrative lacks a clear focus," while Francine Prose, reviewing for People, wrote that "although the stories of some patients are harrowing, Stabiner's account of Dr. Love's near-visionary dedication is uplifting." A contributor for Publishers Weekly called the book a "disturbing look at a field where cost-benefit analyses have become more important than human life," while Town and Country reviewer Stacey Okun remarked that Stabiner's work "in many parts, reads like a novel—but whose compelling subject is all too real."

All Girls: Single-Sex Education and Why It Matters takes a look inside two all-girls schools in an attempt to show what the positives and the drawbacks are to single-sex education for women. Stabiner visited a public girls' school in Harlem and a private girls' school in Los Angeles, examining the daily lives of the girls, both in school and in their homes. She also spent time with teachers and administrators. In a review for Booklist, Gillian Engberg called the book "moving, intimate, and revealing," and remarked that it "raises larger questions about how success is measured." Charlotte Hays, writing for Women's Quarterly, remarked that "this book is a must read for anyone who cares about the fate not only of single-sex education but of education in general. In Stabiner's hands, the material becomes a rip-roaring adventuretale." Stabiner herself, in an article for Daughters in which she explained her decision to write the book and what she learned in the process, summed up by noting: "In a good girls' school there are high expectations communicated by the teachers that the girls just sop up. If you put your daughter somewhere people have expectations of her competence and abilities, she will respond to that."

My Girl: Adventures with a Teen in Training is about Stabiner's daughter Sarah and the changes in the mother-daughter relationship as Sarah grew from little girl to teenager. Always close to her daughter, Stabiner had heard horror stories about what would happen as the girl approached her teen years, both from books on parenting and from her own friends. So Stabiner kept track for herself, and with her book offers a different view of this transitional period in a girl's life. A contributor for Kirkus Reviews pointed out that the majority of the volume focuses on Sarah's sixth-grade year, when she was still fairly young, and also that Stabiner's affluence hardly makes them a typical example; "she seems not to realize readers may blink at her descriptions of Sarah's posh private school." Gillian Engberg, writing for Booklist, called the book a "vivid, intimate memoir."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, April 1, 1997, William Beatty, review of To Dance with the Devil: The New War on Breast Cancer, p. 1272; June 1, 2002, Gillian Engberg, review of All Girls: Single-Sex Education and Why It Matters, p. 1653; March 1, 2005, Gillian Engberg, review of My Girl: Adventures with a Teen in Training, p. 1121.

Daughters, January-February, 2004, Karen Stabiner, "Karen Stabiner on All-Girls Schools," p. 1; May-June, 2005, Karen Stabiner, "The Girls Are Alright, Alright?" p. 15.

Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 2005, review of My Girl, p. 112.

Library Journal, April 1, 1997, Cress-Ingebo, review of To Dance with the Devil, p. 116; March 15, 2001, Judith Sutton, review of The Valentino Cookbook, p. 102; August, 2002, Terry Christner, review of All Girls, p. 114; May 1, 2005, Kay Hogan Smith, "Mama's Got a New Bag," review of My Girl, p. 104.

People, June 28, 1993, Joanne Kaufman, review of Inventing Desire: Inside Chiat/Day; The Hottest Shop, the Coolest Players, the Big Business of Advertising, p. 31; June 23, 1997, Francine Prose, review of To Dance with the Devil, p. 31.

Publishers Weekly, April 7, 1997, review of To Dance with the Devil, p. 83; February 5, 2001, review of The Valentino Cookbook, p. 84; June 3, 2002, review of All Girls, p. 75.

Town and Country, May, 1997, Stacey Okun, review of To Dance with the Devil, p. 46.

Women's Quarterly, summer, 2002, Charlotte Hays, interview regarding All Girls, p. 11.

Women's Review of Books, December, 1997, Lundy Braun, review of To Dance with the Devil, p. 21.