My name is Laurie, and I share the best pets and extended family blogs - for and by women - with BlogHer.com readers.

I have always loved words, pictures, stories, and people. I read and write obsessively. Over the years I've kept paper journals, written quotes obsessively on scraps of paper and in notebooks, gotten in trouble in class for writing back and forth when I should have been learning some theorem or the other, sent heartfelt and sometimes-ill-advised letters, fallen in love over e-mail and broken up as a result of - and also in the early days of - Instant Messaging.

I'm an Internet freak but admittedly came (relatively) late to blogs.

Music, books, and photography are very important to me. I like to think that I have good taste. Still, I'm a huge fan of People Magazine, and have a huge knowledge base of useless celebrity trivia, so it balances out.

I love to travel, and experience other places and cultures. At heart I'm a beach bum, but anywhere compelling will do. I've so far only been to a fraction of the places I want to go. I also enjoy traveling alone, which I've found freeing and not at all lonely (99 percent of the time.) Photography is inseparable from my trips, and I love great photoblogs.

I live in Maryland, in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.. I grew up here, but spent five years in Ohio for grad school and my first job. As a result, I sometimes consider myself, oddly, a transplanted Midwesterner.

I 've had a million jobs, but most often work as a writer and a teacher.

Right now, you can find me online at LaurieWrites

Thanks for reading.

BlogHer '06 - San Jose, CA
BlogHer Business '07 - New York, NY
BlogHer '07 - Chicago, IL
BlogHer '08 - San Francisco, CA
Reach Out Tour '08 - Boston, MA
Reach Out Tour '08 - Washington DC