Candace Bushnell is the critically acclaimed, international best-selling novelist whose first book, Sex and the City, was the basis for the HBO hit series and subsequent blockbuster movie. Her fourth novel, Lipstick Jungle became a popular television series on NBC. Bushnell’s novels include Four Blondes (2000), Trading Up (2003), Lipstick Jungle (2005), One Fifth Avenue (2008) and The Carrie Diaries (2010).
Bushnell grew up in Glastonbury, Ct, and moved to New York City at age 19. She attended Rice University and New York University, and began her professional career at 19 when she wrote a children’s book for Simon & Schuster.
Throughout her twenties, Bushnell developed her trademark style as a freelancer, writing darkly humorous pieces about women, relationships and dating for Mademoiselle, Self Magazine, and Esquire. In 1990, she wrote a column that would become a precursor for Sex and the City, called The Human Cartoon, a fictional serial published in Hamptons Magazine. She began writing for the New York Observer in 1993; in November of 1994 she created the column Sex and the City, which ran in the New York Observer for two years. The column was bought as a book in 1995, and sold to HBO as a series in 1996.
Recently, she hosted a radio show on Sirius Satellite Radio, called Sex, Success, and Sensibility, which aired from October 2006 to October 2008. She is currently at work on two young adult novels, The Carrie Diaries, which will explore the life of Carrie Bradshaw during in her teenage years in New York.
Through her books and television series, Bushnell’s work has influenced and defined two generations of women. She is the winner of the 2006 Matrix Award for books (other winners include Joan Didion and Amy Tan), and a recipient of the Albert Einstein Spirit of Achievement Award. She currently resides in Manhattan.