Lesley M. M. Blume is an author, journalist, columnist, cultural observer, and bon vivant based in New York City, where she was born.  She did her undergraduate work at Williams College and Oxford University, and took her graduate degree in history from Cambridge University, where she was a Herchel Smith fellow.

Ms. Blume has authored three critically-acclaimed books for Knopf and is currently finishing her fourth, which will be released in September 2010.  Upon the release of her third novel, Tennyson, reviewers and critics placed her in the same class as writers Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, and Truman Capote (“Brilliant, unusual writing.”—The Chicago Tribune).

As a journalist, Ms. Blume began her career at The Jordan Times in Amman and Cronkite Productions in New York City. She later became an off-air reporter for ABC News Nightline with Ted Koppel in Washington, D.C., where she helped cover the historic presidential election in 2000, the 9/11 attacks, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and countless other events and topics.

Now writing full-time, Ms. Blume has covered culture, media, politics, and fashion (and sometimes the thorny politics of fashion) for many publications, including Vogue, Slate, Mediaite, and The Daily Beast.  She is a regular contributor to The Big Money and is also The Huffington Post‘s contributing style editor.  In November 2010, Chronicle Books will release a book by Ms. Blume based on her popular Let’s Bring Back column for The Huffington Post.

Ms. Blume was recently hand-picked by Vogue as a founding member of the Vogue 100, an organization of “influential decision makers and opinion leaders known for their distinctive taste in fashion and culture, [and who] personify the rising influence of women over the past several decades.”

She lives in Greenwich Village with her husband and their French bulldog, who was a featured character in her bestselling book, Cornelia and the Audacious Escapades of the Somerset Sisters.

Sadly, most of her heroes and heroines are dead or fictional. They include but are not restricted to: Diana Vreeland, Marlene Dietrich, Isak Dinesen, Katharine Graham, Zero Mostel, Royal Tenenbaum, the Marchesa Casati, Oscar Wilde, Peggy Guggenheim, Elsa Schiaparelli, Anthony Blanche, Flora Post, Eleanor Roosevelt, Lee Miller, Edith Wharton, and Collette.

Photograph of Ms. Blume taken by Dan King for Elle magazine, October 2009 issue.