A funny thing happened on the way to this blog post:  I met Nora Ephron.  Two weeks ago I was at a reception for the new president of Barnard College, and was heading out the door when who should walk in but Nora herself.  Which felt both weird and inevitable (to me), because of course I’ve spent the last two weeks thinking about her and her writing.  Without giving myself time to lose my nerve, I asked the woman I was talking to to introduce us.  I explained to Nora that we were all reading I Feel Bad About My Neck, how her book won the voting (even beating Valley of the Dolls!), that we have a new book club on realsimple.com, blah blah blah.  I would be shocked to learn that she actually understood a word of what I was saying because I was speed talking and all over the place, but she was charming and gracious and listened patiently as I blathered on. 

The next day when my head had cleared a bit I remembered that I am on my town’s library board with a woman who works at the agency that represents Nora Ephron.  I called the agent and gave her my pitch:  would Nora consider answering a few questions from members of our book club?  As you all know, I Feel Bad About My Neck was first published in 2006, and if I were Nora Ephron I’d probably be sick of answering questions about the book already.  So I asked with fingers crossed and expectations low.

And...Nora is now on board to address a few questions.  So here’s the deal:  please post your questions as comments here, I’ll email them to her, and I’ll post her answers within the next couple of weeks.

(As for the rest of I Feel Bad About My Neck, I’ll put up another post within the next few days.  Sorry for the delay, but this seemed too great to pass up.)

So, questions for Nora Ephron!  I’ll start us off:  is there an age at which a woman just stops caring about her neck, and everything else that is suffering from the forces of gravity?