Caren Lissner, 32, lives in Hoboken, N.J., directly across the river from midtown Manhattan. She's the editor-in-chief of a chain of eight weekly newspapers based in Hoboken and spends the rest of her time as a ""chronic creative writer"" of fiction and satire. She grew up in central Jersey and majored in English at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where she loosed her bizarre sense of humor on the university community through an award-winning biweekly humor column in the Daily Pennsylvanian.

After graduating in 1993, Lissner moved to North Jersey. As she began work as a reporter covering gritty political battles and festivals in Hoboken, she also continued her fiction and ...read more