Ann Bauer has written three novels, A Wild Ride Up the Cupboards, The Forever Marriage and Forgiveness 4 You, as well as Damn Good Food, a memoir and cookbook co-authored with Hells Kitchen founder, Chef Mitch Omer. Her essays, travel stories and reviews have appeared in ELLE, Salon, Slate, Redbook, DAME, The Sun, The Washington Post, Star Tribune and The New York Times.
Ann’s novels have been named “Best Of” by The Washington Post, Star Tribune and The Providence Journal. She has been honored by Harvard’s Nieman Foundation for excellence in nonfiction writing. An Iowa Arts fellow, she has taught at Macalester College and Brown University.
But she’s best known for a blog post of 1,100 words that she dashed off in 20 minutes one Tuesday morning. “The Conversation We Never Have” was about the connection between money and writing, how wealthy voices, authors and stories are elevated. It was shared and reprinted widely. Here it is on Salon.
In fall 2016, Ann’s oldest child — Andrew — died of unknown causes at age 28. She stopped writing and gave only one interview, to Modern Love/WBUR, about the circumstances. She published nothing until 2018 when an editor from the Post saw a Facebook message she’d written and asked for an essay on anger. This piece was cited by national clergy and political leaders, including the office of Sen. Sherrod Brown.
Ann lives part-time in St. Paul, MN, and travels with her husband John, a Spanish-language computer security expert. She has an adult son nearby and a daughter who lives with her husband in Illinois.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Ann became an advocate for harm reduction and opening schools. After a Twitter thread she wrote went viral, she was interviewed about her reasons for stepping back into the public sphere.