Biography

For Maggie Van Ostrand
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Maggie Van Ostrand was born and raised in New York City, a hotbed of juicy dialogue for future material.

She started writing when she was very young, but ran into a barrier of parental discouragement. They wanted her to enter a profession that paid. She didn’t pick up a pen again until they were both so old, they could no longer argue convincingly without falling off their walkers.

Harvard cannot claim her, nor can Yale, Princeton or Radcliffe. Not even NYU can brag about being her alma mater. On the other hand, Queens College might remember her. Then again, maybe not.

While traveling as a roadie in the music business, she co-wrote “Home Is Where the Hurt Is” with Grammy- and Tony-winning humorist, Roger Miller. She was head writer for Goodson-Todman’s quiz show, “Trivia Trap,” and, as a freelancer, has ghost-written for television sitcom writers and stand-up comics.

In 1995, she began a column, “A Balloon in Cactus” (subsequently renamed “The Buck Starts Here) in the delicious newsmagazine, El Ojo Del Lago, for which she has received two Awards for Outstanding Literary Achievement.

She was awarded 2002 Best Feature Article of the Year by the popular and highly regarded ezine, mexconnect.com.

Readers, who think Maggie has a headstart on eccentricity, cut out her columns and stick them on their refrigerators. Thanks to loyal readers submitting these clips to bigtime newspapers (do you know how expensive it is to mail a refrigerator?), she became a regular contributor to the Chicago Tribune, and has been published in the Boston Globe, Newsday, the Philadelphia Inquirer and other major newspapers and magazines both online and in print.

Maggie is putting the finishing touches on her new book, "The Secrets of Women: Ask - We'll Tell," covering everything from why women love shoes to why we'd like to murder the guy who invented Viagra.

Maggie Van Ostrand lives both in Ajijic, Mexico and Pine Mountain, California, each with a population smaller than Al Pacino.

Her Articles

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