Leigh Newman is a powerhouse, even when she’s shuffling her schedule to try and meet with you.

I recently had the opportunity to meet Molly Jong-Fast and speak with her about her new comic novel, The Social Climber’s Handbook (Villard, 2011), in which Daisy Greenbaum, an unlikely serial killer who lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, volunteers at a soup kitchen and cares for her family.

It was a wonderful morning treat talking with Susan Jane Gilman about her most recent memoir Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven. She, a native New Yorker who is living in Geneva, Switzerland, and I, a recent transplant to New York from L.A., met on Skype to connect about travel, writing, and life.