Carol Weston is a writer and speaker. The author of twelve books, she has been the "Dear Carol" advice columnist at Girls' Life Magazine for sixteen years. Her first book, GIRLTALK: All the Stuff Your Sister Never Told You (HarperCollins), now in a fourth edition, has been in print since 1985 and was translated into ten languages. Her first novel, The Diary of Melanie Martin (Knopf), became a four-book series. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Yale with a master's from Middlebury, Carol has appeared on Today, The View, 48 Hours, Oprah, and other shows and given talks at scores of schools around the country and in Canada. Newsweek calls her a "Teen Dear Abby" and she has spoken at conferences for the American Society of Journalists and Authors, Girl Scouts, National Coalition of Girls' Schools, National Anti-Drug Campaign, and Canadian Association of Independent Schools Assistant Heads. Carol and her husband, playwright Rob Ackerman, live in Manhattan and have two daughters and one cat. Carol speaks French and Spanish.