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Gail Pool

 A Biographical Note

 

 

I’ve been involved in literary journalism for three decades—as a magazine editor, a review editor, a critic, a columnist, and a freelance journalist.  For four years, I was editor of Boston Review—which was then called New Boston Review—and for more than ten years, I was books editor of the Radcliffe Quarterly, an alumnae publication (nowadays also an alumni publication).  I’ve been a book columnist for the Christian Science Monitor, where I reviewed travel literature; for Wilson Library Bulletin, a trade magazine, where I created and edited a book review section and later reviewed mysteries; and for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, where I wrote a column on first fiction that also appeared regularly in the Houston Post and the San Diego Union-Tribune, and sometimes in the St. Petersburg Times and the Kansas City Star.  My articles and essays have appeared in such publications as Columbia Journalism Review and the New York Times, and I have written about reviewing for the Women’s Review of Books, Boston Review, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.   My article on women on the book page—as reviewers and authors—appeared in the March/April 2008 issue of the Women’s Review of Books.  My previous book, Other People’s Mail, an anthology of modern letter stories, was published in 2000 by the University of Missouri Press.

 

 I was born in New York City, attended Hunter College High School, and concentrated in Classics at Harvard.  I have an MA in Creative Writing and an MLS.  My husband and I lived in London, New Guinea, and San Francisco before settling, with our son, in Brookline, Massachusetts.  We now live in Cambridge, where for many years I taught Writing for Publication at the Radcliffe Seminars.  I’m a member of the National Book Critics Circle and the National Writers Union.  I’m also a member of LibraryThing (http://www.librarything.com/), and for those who enjoy browsing other people’s libraries, the catalog of my books (still in-progress, but so far around 3100- volumes-long) is available online.