I spent most of my childhood in suburban Cincinnati hanging upside down out of trees (I split my first pair of bellbottoms doing that), combing a nearby creek for crawfish and playing Barbies with my sister Katie. Then at 13, literary aspirations hit me hard. I decided to be a poet who would write gems under the pen name Emily Long. (Emily Dickinson was already taken.) In high school, I came to my senses, somewhat. Inspired by the Watergate hearings, I changed my future profession from poet to journalism. My financial prospects improved slightly.

My circuitous career path included 10 years of waitressing, a stint as an au pair in the south of France and a bachelor’s degree in art history. Eventually I landed at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where I studied with some grizzled Chicago police reporters and the magazine-writing guru Abe Peck. Master’s in hand, I spent the next dozen years working for daily papers, first in Burlington, Vermont, where I met my husband, and then Portland, Maine. This was perfect work for someone as endlessly curious --some might even say nosey -- such as myself.

My stint at the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram was especially good to me. I put my art history degree to work following the footsteps of the many American painters who have worked along this jagged, one-of-kind coast. Notebook in hand, I stepped out on the porch of Winslow Homer’s studio and looked at the surf that had inspired the painter a century earlier. I chatted with modern masters Neil Welliver, Alex Katz and Robert Indiana. I met William Wegman’s Weimaraners.

In the evenings, I cooked, shaking off the day’s tensions by whipping up a soufflé or mincing veggies into mirepoix. As so often happens to writers, this avocation eventually bled into my work, and I started a column on all things food. Consequently, when a Mainer made the cut for the 2000 Pillsbury Bake-off in San Francisco, I received an official invite. Something about the Bake-Off press packet got me thinking. Until that moment I had no aspirations to be an author. In fact, each time my husband mentioned his book ambitions, I pooh-poohed them, saying things like, “What in the world would be interesting enough to write a whole book about?” Well for me the answer to that question turned out to be cookoffs.

Inspired by my visit to the 2000 Bake-Off, I wrote a book proposal, sold it in 2001, and left the newspaper world to write, Cookoff: Recipe Fever in America. For a year I crisscrossed the country interviewing chili heads, cowboys, state fair cooking champs, Pillsbury bake-off winners and a few cheats.  I met a legend, the Tunnel of Fudge Woman. I caught the bug and began entering contests. I have yet to win even an honorable mention. My book has fared better. It was named to the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers program. Cookoff showed up on Amazon.com’s list of the best 50 books of 2003. Entertainment Weekly put it on its Must List (#4).

My editor at Viking, Ray Roberts, wanted another book idea. I dug deep into my idea file and plucked out a piece of paper on which I had jotted Moorpark College, where the top school for exotic animal trainers can be found. This two-year program in California seemed promising fodder for a book. What an understatement.

Kicked Bitten and Scratched, chronicles the year I shadowed students through this improbable, magical, grueling program. I met my first binturong. I went on walks with the baboons, the cougars and the wolf. A lemur groomed my shoulder. I talked animals for a year with student trainers and the pros. I tried out all I learned about training on my dogs, Dixie Lou and Penny Jane, and then my husband.