“Plain and simple, Magnolia Gold had always adored magazines. They’d taught her to relieve flatulence, give a hand job and handicap the marriage prospects of Prince William…Being an editor-in chief was the ultimate job for the editor of the high school newspaper, especially one with questionable grammar…When she was growing up in Fargo, magazines had given Magnolia a window into a world where people watched indie movies, wore clothes paraded on red carpets, and referred to Donnatella Versace as if she were their college roommate….”
agnolia Gold, the heroine of Little Pink Slips, wanted to join the world of magazines. This was true of Sally Koslow, her alter ego, as well. Like Magnolia, Sally was born and raised in Fargo, North Dakota, where she edited her high school newspaper, worked as an intern on her hometown newspaper and dreamed of landing in publishing. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin in Madison with honors in English, she moved to Manhattan and started at Mademoiselle Magazine. Like Magnolia, when people asked Sally what connections she’d exercised to snag that job, she fessed up to ignorance as her sole advantage: if she’d grown up in the New York area, she’d have been too intimidated to have called Human Resources at Conde Nast Publications.
Sally rose in the ranks at Mademoiselle and Woman’s Day and in 1994 became the editor-in- chief of McCall’s, at the time the country’s oldest women’s magazines. Eight years later, McCall’s was transformed into the short-lived Rosie, edited by the celebrity Rosie O’Donnell. Rosie moved into Sally’s office and Sally, was named corporate editor until her job was eliminated. Later that year Sally went on to create a magazine prototype for Lifetime Television for Women, owned by Disney and Hearst Magazines, and became the first editor-in-chief of the magazine, which was called Lifetime.
Writing Little Pink Slips was a happy accident. When Sally’s job at Lifetime ended, she decided to join a workshop to try and write fiction. Her first submission eventually became Chapter 1 of Little Pink Slips, which took her eighteen months to write.
Sally’s second book, The Late, Lamented Molly Marx, is currently available in hardcover, Kindle, and audiotape. (Click here to buy the book.) She is currently finishing her third novel, With Friends like These, out the summer of 2010.
Sally has taught at The Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College and is on the faculty of the New York Writer’s Workshop. She consults with and has contributed essays and articles to many American women’s magazines, including O the Oprah Magazine, More, Real Simple, Ladies’ Home Journal, Health, Reader’s Digest and Good Housekeeping as well as the anthology Dirt: The Quirks, Habits and Passions of Keeping House. On television, she has been featured on Today, Good Morning America, Entertainment Tonight, Fox & Friends, Good Day New York and news programs affiliated with MSNBC, CNN and CNBC. Sally has lectured at Yale University, Columbia University, New York University, The University of Chicago, The University of Wisconsin, and many other colleges, professional associations, community and synagogue groups.
Sally has been long-married to Robert Koslow, her college boyfriend, and they are the parents of Jed Koslow, an attorney, and Rory Koslow, who works in the film industry. Although she was born and raised in Fargo, North Dakota, Sally has lived her adult life in Manhattan, where she can often be found running in Central Park.
