People like Koren Zailckas

Koren Zailckas (born 1980) is a bestselling American writer and memoirist. Her debut, Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood, was released in 2005 by Viking Penguin and became a New York Times bestseller. Zailckas attended Nashoba Regional High School in Bolton, Massachusetts and Syracuse University. She is a 2014 recipient of the Alex Awards.

Zailckas grew up in a middle-class family in the northeast.

On September 1, 2008 Zailckas married Eamon Hamilton, singer and songwriter of the band Brakes, whom she met on the social networking site Myspace, in Romainville, France.

As a writer, Zailckas says her writing is informed by memoirists Mary Karr, Nick Flynn, Tobias Wolff, as well as novelists T.C. Boyle, Jeffrey Eugenides, A.M. Homes, Richard Ford, Haruki Murakami. She has also admitted she is heavily influenced by music and song lyrics. Zailckas has been quoted as saying, "If you're a writer, there's a lot of inspiration to be found in lyrics. That's the first thing I do before I get to work in the morning: have a cup of coffee and put on a record."