About Adair

I’m a writer of books and a writing coach/teacher in San Francisco. I started my career in local magazines—first at San Francisco Focus, the city magazine, and then at SF, a design mag where I passed myself off as someone passionately interested in interior design. (This amused my family no end. They remember me sitting on a new living room couch for six months before jumping up and saying, “Hey! We have new furniture!”)

In 1989, The San Francisco Chronicle offered me a column, which I did twice a week on the Back Page for 12 years. In recognition for my work on the column, May 17, 2002, was declared Adair Lara Day in San Francisco by proclamation of Mayor Willie Brown.

I have published some ten books or so, including several collections of columns. My work has also appeared in Cosmopolitan, Reader’s Digest, Parenting, Glamour, Redbook, Ladies’ Home Journal, American Woman, Departures, Westways, American Way, More, Via, Fitness, and Good Housekeeping and many other magazines and newspapers, as well as, more recently, online. I’m currently a columnist for Grandparents.com

I also founded matchwriters.com, a place where aspiring writers can meet one another (currently in redevelopment). It’s endorsed by Amy Tan, Anne Lamott, Dorothy Allison, and Isabel Allende, among others.

Awards
1990: Associated Press, Best Columnist in California.
1997: Humor Columns for Newspapers over 100,000, National Society of Newspaper Columnists.
1998: same outfit, first place, general interest columns.
1999: second place, commentary, American Association of Sunday and Feature editors contest, competing against papers with circulation over 300,000.