Foster, Brooke Lea

PERSONAL:

Female.

ADDRESSES:

Agent—c/o Author Mail, Three Rivers Press, 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.E-mail—bfoster@washingtonian.com.

CAREER:

Washingtonian, Washington, DC, staff writer. Previously worked for the Washington Monthly and the Chronicle of Higher Education.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Recipient of several Dateline Awards, Washington Society of Professional Journalists.

WRITINGS:

The Way They Were: Dealing with Your Parents' Divorce after a Lifetime of Marriage (nonfiction), Three Rivers Press (New York, NY), 2006.

Feeling Them Fall (nonfiction), Three Rivers Press (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor to periodicals such asReaders' Digest, Parents, Psychology Today, Good Housekeeping, and Psychology Today.

SIDELIGHTS:

Brooke Lea Foster is a journalist who specializes in social issues, particularly education, children and families, immigration, prisons, and philanthropy. She has won numerous Dateline Awards from the Washington Society of Professional Journalists, and her story on illegal teenagers in the Latino American community reached the finals for the Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism, which is awarded for stellar work pertaining to children and families. Foster was also a finalist for the 2005 Livingston Award for Young Journalists, the most prestigious prize for journalists under age thirty-five. Her first book, The Way They Were: Dealing with Your Parents' Divorce after a Lifetime of Marriage, looks at the hardships suffered by adult children when their parents decide to go their separate ways. She explains how the situation can make adult children reexamine their relationships with their parents, and how this can bring about the realization that they are not as independent as they might have believed themselves to be. Adult children might also find themselves questioning whether their parents might have divorced sooner had they not been responsible for raising them, a belief that can produce feelings of guilt. Library Journal critic Douglas C. Lord found Foster's effort consisted of "verbose, bitter grief and banal observation." On the other hand, a Publishers Weeklyreviewer described the work as a "helpful, down-to-earth approach" to the subject.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Library Journal, November 1, 2005, Douglas C. Lord, review ofThe Way They Were: Dealing with Your Parents' Divorce after a Lifetime of Marriage, p. 106.

Publishers Weekly, October 24, 2005, review of The Way They Were, p. 50.

ONLINE

Washingtonian Online,http://www.washingtonian.com/(April 15, 2006), brief biography of author.