CLAIRE LAZEBNIK: I was born in Newton, Massachusetts, the youngest of five children. My father once claimed my umbilical cord was never completely cut, which may explain why I went to a college (Harvard) only twenty minutes away from home. I was sixteen when I entered college and couldn't even drive; I left when I was twenty and still couldn't drive. I moved to New York (so I wouldn't have to drive) and puttered around there for a while before ending up in Los Angeles, where you have to drive. I failed my first driver's license test-so badly the DMV guy made me get out of the car and drove the last block by himself-but passed the second time, bought myself a car, and became a true, if reluctant, Angeleno.
In L.A. I wrote for magazines, including GQ, Vogue, and Cosmopolitan, and met my husband, a TV sitcom writer. We got married in 1989 and from 1991 to 2000, I pretty much kept myself barefoot and pregnant. I gave birth to three sons and one daughter, and when the youngest was six months old, I decided I was done producing kids and gave birth to a novel instead. Same as It Never Was (St. Martin's, 2003) was also published in England and Australia, translated into French, and made into a movie called “Hello Sister, Goodbye Life” for the ABC Family cable channel.
My oldest son was diagnosed with autism at the age of two and a half, which led to my meeting Dr. Lynn Kern Koegel, who runs the Koegel Autism Clinic at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with her husband, Dr. Robert Koegel. One day Lynn asked me to write a book with her, and a year or so later we published Overcoming Autism: Finding the Answers, Strategies, and Hope That Can Transform a Child's Life (Viking/Penguin 2004). I also have a son who has celiac disease and a daughter who has Addison's disease, but I have yet to write a book on either subject.
I taught myself to knit from a book back when I was in high school and happily knit my way through many a boring college seminar. I didn't like to measure or block and the sleeves always came out too long or too short. Which was fine with me: I’ve always believed that with knitting it's the journey and not the destination that matters.
Cats, dogs, and children put a crimp in my knitting habit-I’d leave half a sweater sleeve and come back to find a big old tangled knot-but now that the kids and pets are older and knitting is actually considered hip, I’ve returned to my old love.
Claire