Like a lot of women her age MERED­ITH MARAN has a hard time believ­ing she’s a woman of her age. And yet she’s pub­lished more than a dozen books includ­ing The New Old Me Why We Write About Our­selves Why We Write My Lie and A The­o­ry of Small Earth­quakes. When she’s not hik­ing Mount Hol­ly­wood attend­ing read­ings at indie book­stores or scour­ing Los Ange­les’ finest thrift shops she’s writ­ing for venues includ­ing The New York Times The Wash­ing­ton Post The Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor The Los Ange­les Review of Books The Rum­pus and Salon. The grate­ful recip­i­ent of fel­low­ships from Mac­Dow­ell and Yad­do and a mem­ber of the Nation­al Book Crit­ics Cir­cle Mered­ith lives in a Sil­ver Lake bun­ga­low that’s even old­er than she is.