A Brooklyn-born poetry PhD moves west and finds her mojo

Author, blogger, freelance writer, and recovering academic, Edie Jarolim has written an acerbic and racy memoir that's also inspirational - especially for late starters and single women.

Approaching middle age, Edie took a brave step, something many people just fantasize about: She quit her job in travel publishing at Fodor's, left her hometown of New York City, and moved to Tucson, Arizona, to become a writer. This book proves that it was a smart move. Her wickedly funny prose spares no one she encounters, least of all herself.

Getting Naked for Money is named for, and includes the story of, an assignment by a women's magazine to go to a nudist resort, undercover - and uncovered. The author isn't a typical travel journalist. She has no sense of direction, is afraid of heights, and is a klutz. She also had a phobia of driving, which she overcame.

Working on the editorial desks of three major travel publishers and one city newspaper, Jarolim pulls back the curtain on press trips, comps, and travel writing conferences, calling out hypocrisy from both sides of the writer/editor divide. She also takes on the hospitality industry; she'll never get another free spa treatment or be hosted at a B&B again. But her adventures -- everywhere from Egypt and Mexico to Easter Island, from Las Vegas to the Texas Hill Country -- are warmly humorous, relatable, and sometimes poignant. Anyone who has stumbled along a meandering career path rather than striding purposefully towards a goal will be heartened by this story.

Edie Jarolim earned her PhD in English and American literature from NYU; her dissertation was the basis of The Collected Poems of Paul Blackburn. She worked as a guidebook editor at Simon & Schuster (Frommer's) and Random House (Fodor's) in New York and Rough Guides in London before moving to Tucson, Arizona, and becoming a freelance writer (or, as her mother might have put it, you left your good job in New York to do what?).

She is the author of three travel guides, Frommer's San Antonio and Austin, The Complete Idiot's Travel Guide to Mexico's Beach Resorts, and Arizona for Dummies, and one dog guide, Am I Boring My Dog: And 99 Things Every Dog Wishes You Knew. Her articles have appeared in publications ranging from Brides and Sunset to The New York Times Book Review, National Geographic Traveler and The Wall Street Journal. She created three blogs, WillMyDogHateMe.com, focussing on all things canine; FreudsButcher.com, devoted to genealogy, psychology, and meat; and EdieJarolim.com, primarily dedicated to discussing writing and publishing, but likely to go off on odd tangents (that's true of all the blogs, come to think of it). She currently spends most of her time in Tucson, where she is best known as a dining reviewer, but her terrier mix, Madeleine, is showing signs of restlessness.