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Mary Laura Philpott: Mrs. Philpott’s Penguins
Chapter16.org, 26 May 2015

Mary Laura Philpott is neither a novelist nor a journalist, but she makes her living as a writer anyway. In fact, studying Philpott’s work could serve as a kind of crash course in turning a gift for words into a career: she’s been an op-ed columnist (for The New York Times no less), a ghostwriter (she’s not saying for whom), an editor (she runs Musing, the online journal at Parnassus Books in Nashville), an essayist (most recently for Proximity), a blogger (at I Miss You When I Blink), even a poet of humorous legal verse and a member of Us Weekly’s fashion police. And next week Philpott will add author to her list of writerly titles—on June 2, Penguins With People Problems officially hits stores.

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