Actually, while I knew her cats well and loved them very much, I have to admit that I did not know my cat sitting client that well. All I knew was that she was a writer, had a lot of books in her apartment, always paid in advance and seemed like a cool person.

It’s been years since I cat sat for Laurie, but we have stayed in touch through social media, and, of course, I read her memoir Care and Feeding, which was published last year and quickly became a New York Times bestseller.

I love learning about ambitious women who come to New York City after growing up in small towns to pursue their big city dreams, and as Care and Feeding begins, Laurie arrives in New York City in the mid-1990s determined to make a name for herself as a writer.

She attends cooking school and launches a successful career in the food world that includes stints working as an assistant and writer for two superstar chefs: Mario Batali at the height of Babbo’s success and Anthony Bourdain with whom she co-authored Appetites and World Travel.

Laurie writes about her experiences with both of these famous men, but Care and Feeding is very much her story, and she is fearless in her honesty when she writes about being an addict, who, while high functioning, makes a lot of decisions involving booze and men that make her life even more chaotic than it needs to be.

I talked to Laurie about what makes a good memoir, the feedback she has gotten to her book and if it might be adapted for television.

So I know you from my time as a cat sitter. I think I only met you the one time you hired me. We have followed each other and communicated via social media for years, but I don’t remember ever seeing you in-person again. Did I see you again?

I know that there was that initial meeting, and then I had a party, and I invited you, but a cat that was very dear to you died, and you weren’t feeling well enough to come.

The worst part of cat sitting was when the cats died. None of them died while I was cat sitting. But a cat or two would die every year, and it was just so heartbreaking because I spent so much time with them and loved them all.

We could probably talk about cats for an hour.

We could just do the interview about cats. But you do have a book to talk about. So let me ask you about that now: It’s one thing to write a book, but what’s it like to do press for a book? It seems like it would be exciting but also exhausting.

The book came out in March of 2025. So I started doing press in mid-January of last year. I had a meeting this morning with a friend who I’m helping do some development work on his book, and he reminded me that before I started doing interviews I was really nervous, which I don’t remember. But I guess that makes sense. I think I had a lot of dread or a lot of nervousness because of the personal nature of what I’d written about in the book, that it was going to be awkward or difficult. I don’t know. This was my first time writing a book by myself and a book that was so personal. So I had a lot of anxiety about it and really none of that was warranted as it turned out. I’ve been asked a lot of great questions. I don’t get tired of it. First of all, I get to talk about myself. Who doesn’t love that? And I’m proud of the book. And, of course, I love money. So I love to try and sell the book. It all feels like gravy. To have anyone that has read it or that’s interested in reading it and wants to talk about it, I feel really lucky.

As someone who knows you through your cats, I always really liked you because you like cats. Then when I read your book and got to the end, I was like, ‘I love her even more.’ I was so proud of you. I didn’t know any of this stuff you write about your life because, again, I didn’t really know you well, but I love how honest you were. I love when people tell the truth.

Memoirs that I can’t stand and that I throw down in disgust are the self-aggrandizing ones. They tend to be celebrity memoirs. There’s one that came out recently from someone in the food world that just absolutely lacks in self-reflection whatsoever. It’s just a self-aggrandizing like, ‘Look at this, and then I did this thing.’ That to me is like, ‘Okay, I could just read a Forbes profile of you. Why did you have to write a whole book?’ The books that I’ve always loved since I was a kid are the ones where people are talking about their ugliest habits or their most shameful habits or their dark, difficult feelings—Judy Bloom, even the Ramona Quimby books, which are on their face kind of not that. I mean, Ramona is like a difficult character who doesn’t always behave well and has feelings of jealousy and rage and resentment, and I love that.

My closest friends are the people I know all of the “bad stuff” about. I’m not friends with people that are perfect and have the perfect job and are perfect all the time. I don’t think you can get close to someone who isn’t honest about their imperfections, and I don’t think you can get close to a writer and really connect with their writing if they don’t tell you the truth. As for how you wrote the book, are you someone who kept diaries and journals over the years that you were able to look back on?

Yes, definitely. That was a huge help. I’m really out of the habit now, but in the time period, especially in the time period that I write about in the book from the mid-’90s into maybe the early, mid-aughts, I was a very meticulous journal keeper and note keeper. So I do have a lot of handwritten accounts of things that were going on at the time. That was super helpful. Also, very weird and in some cases sort of cringy to pull out that stuff I was struggling with, but what a great resource. The other thing, and I’ve said this a lot, this was at the time when email was starting to become part of our lives, and I loved it. I always loved writing and receiving letters. So when email became a thing that you could access daily, I transitioned over to that. I was a big email writer and used it as a form of letter writing even to people who I would see, people who lived in New York, people I would see frequently. So I have this electronic record of letters or emails where I would say, ‘Oh, I went out last night, and this crazy thing happened, and let me tell you about it or this is how I’m feeling about my job.’ I had this fairly searchable record of a lot of things that happened, which I drew on a lot as I was writing the first 10 years of the book. I would recommend that anyone who eventually writes a memoir, either start doing it or hold onto all those diaries and notebooks.

Going back to the origin of the book, did you have an agent who was like, Laurie, I want you to write a book and focus on your own story. Or was this a situation where you were like, I want to tell my own story, and I have to go out and convince someone to let me do this because I’m not a celebrity?

It’s kind of neither and both. I had an agent already. Because of my longstanding work with Anthony Bourdain, I was sort of grandfathered into representation by his agent, Kim Witherspoon, who represents a lot of people in the food world and also people outside the food world. She became my agent when I did the second co-authored book with him and started representing me. So I already had that piece of it in place, which was very lucky because one of the difficult hurdles of getting a book published is getting an agent to take on the project and try and sell it to an editor. So I had done two books that came out in 2021, World Travel: An Irreverent Guide, which was co-authored with Anthony Bourdain, and one called Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography, which was, of course, about Anthony Bourdain. And I think there was a conversation around, what would you like to do next?

There was no one beating my door now to say, ‘It’s time for you to write your memoir.’ But this is the book that I have been writing for myself in my head for decades and also trying to live a life that might be worthy of writing about someday. Because I had a self-destructive streak, I thought, ‘Well, maybe someday I’ll be able to write something about the adventures that I’ve had.’ It wasn’t until I had established myself as a co-author that I felt even the confidence to start to really contemplate it. And I was lucky to have the adjacency to celebrity that made it a marketable possibility.

I’m sure some editors might be like, ‘Make your experiences with Batali and Bourdain the whole book.’ But you told your story mixed with your experiences with them, and you did a really good job. This is Laurie Woolever’s story.

Yeah, and that was deliberate. I didn’t want to do a celebrity tell-all for any number of reasons. I mean, first and foremost, out of respect for Tony Bourdain and his legacy—someone who I loved quite a lot, and I didn’t expect him to die when he did. I’ve seen enough people kind of try and glom onto him and try and bask in his reflected glory, and I didn’t want to be one of those people. Also, I didn’t want to oversell the role that he played in my life. Yes, I worked for him. Yes, I considered him a mentor, and we co-authored books together, but this was a person who had lots of people in his life, who was very, very busy. I would go six or nine months without seeing him in person. There’s just any number of reasons of good taste and truth that kept me from really putting more Tony into the book than there was.

And then with Mario Batali, I told the parts of the story that I thought were interesting and relevant. I also really tried to make a balance between telling the sort of sordid and ugly parts of the story that a lot of people are already somewhat familiar with because of his being held to account in 2017 during the Me Too movement. But I also did want to add nuance because as much as he was monstrous in his behavior, and he was really destructive to a lot of people, it would be dishonest for me to say that I hated working for him or that I hated him or that I didn’t have a good time or I didn’t benefit from that job because I did. I had fun. I found him at times really funny and really smart and really entertaining. And I felt, at times, incredibly lucky to have that job. I had so much fun, and I learned so much.

So I think there’s probably a desire out there to see this guy just crucified, and I was honest, and I didn’t hold back in sort of sharing those details about ways in which he behaved monstrously, but I didn’t want it to just be like, ‘Fuck this guy’ because I was there, and he is a bad guy who has behaved badly, but he is also a complete human being. I think it’s more useful and interesting to understand that even people who have good qualities and who can sometimes be generous also do awful things.

People are multidimensional. We all are. I’ve done shitty things, and then I’ve done wonderful things.

Same. I mean, if you’ve read the book, I did some pretty shitty things and behaved badly. There was no telling my own story without really owning all of that and being honest about that and holding myself to account. So, yeah, I knew that some people would come to the book because of an interest in Tony Bourdain, certainly, or in Mario Batali, but I hoped that if that got them to pick it up or to open the first page, they would stay because the story that I told about my own life was compelling enough.

Are you a writer who keeps a writing schedule? Maybe you show up at your desk at 9 a.m. every morning and write till 1 p.m. and then have lunch?

Not so much. I try and write in the morning because I think I’m clearest and best then, but if it doesn’t happen, then it’s at the afternoon or it’s in the evening sometimes. I don’t write a lot at night, but I can. I have.

I don’t know if you have watched The Beast in Me on Netflix…

Two, three episodes in maybe.

Well, this isn’t a huge spoiler, but Claire Dane is an author, and she has chapters or pages due. And, of course, our editor is checking in, and like always on TV shows, the writer never has the pages because they’re not working on their book, and they only write it at the last minute. It just made me laugh because there are writers in TV shows and movies never make their deadlines. So there was never an editor calling you like, ‘Laurie, it’s been nine months. Where are my pages?’

No. I don’t if it’s know my upbringing or my temperament, but if you tell me what the deadline is, I am going to hit that deadline. I’m afraid of getting in trouble. I’m afraid of people being mad at me. I want to get paid. Publishers are smart in sort of tying your compensation to your ability to hit the deadline. So all of that structure really is very motivating for me.

Maybe being a journalist, too, keeps you timely. I’m terrified to miss deadlines. I don’t want my editor to think I’m a terrible person.

I’ve never really considered myself a journalist, but I’ve done a fair bit of magazine writing. You and I have talked a little bit about class stuff, especially when Jen Romolini’s book came out. [In Romolini’s excellent memoir Ambition Monster, she highlights the differences between how people from working-class backgrounds actually work hard when they land magazine jobs, and the rich kids whose connections land them plum roles at magazines… don’t.] I came from an, I’d say, solidly middle class, maybe lower-middle class background, but I think it’s sort of a privileged outlook to be like, ‘You’ll get it when you get it.’

Have you heard from any readers who are struggling with addiction or maybe have had crazy experiences in the restaurant business? Have you had any kind of interesting or touching conversations with people that were really impacted by your book in a very personal way?

Yeah, the most feedback I’ve gotten is from people who either also got sober or are thinking about getting sober or recently gotten sober. Then there’s a lot of crossover there between people who have struggled with addiction and people who worked in the restaurant industry, do currently or have in the past, and they felt that they saw parts of their story there or that it was very relatable, that they also had their asses grabbed at work or found themselves drinking too much with colleagues or slept their way through the wait staff or whatever it was. There’s a lot of commonality in those experiences for people everywhere. Anywhere there’s a restaurant culture, there’s those elements of it. So that’s been really nice to know that this is a relatable story and not just a one-off.

You’re going to be leading a writing workshop in Ireland, which sounds pretty interesting. Can you tell me about that, and can people still sign up for it?

Yes. So that is happening in September of this year, and it’s through a travel company called Bog & Thunder, which was started by a husband and wife team, Kate and Max, Kate McCabe and Max Sussman. They’re based in Michigan, and they both come from the food and hospitality worlds. They started this company because Kate’s family has deep roots in Ireland. It had started as small group travel with a very heavy emphasis on food and the food ways of Ireland, and they’ve started to expand it a little bit to have a writing component. I’m not the first writer that they’ve had come and do this, but the book has a nice kind of a food tie-in and a memoir thing. This is the first time I’ve done anything like this. One of the things I really love doing is reading other people’s work and giving feedback, telling them what’s working, telling them what I think maybe they could do to make it even stronger, asking questions, helping people really dig deep into their storytelling process.

I’m excited to go back to Ireland. I’ve only been once before when I was in my 20s, and I made an absolute disaster of that trip, which I wrote about on a Substack called The Places Review. So I’m excited to go back as a sober grownup with some more life lived and to try and do Ireland right. I think there are 12 spots, and I think there are a couple of spots unsold.

I’m obsessed with your book being adapted for television. Could that happen?

I’m very much hoping for that. I’m in talks right now with some folks who have developed books into shows and films. We’ll see what happens. It’s the dream. I think even in the best of times, which we certainly are not in now in the entertainment space, it’s always for every thousand projects that get started, maybe four get made. So it may well might not happen, but it might. There have been points this year where I’ve thought about writing my own script, and then I just haven’t done that yet because that’s a whole new set of tools that I haven’t quite learned yet. But, yeah, there are possibilities.

Are you writing any books right now?

I’m doing a couple of co-authoring projects, and one of them is a cookbook with a chef called Ryan Bartlow. He has two restaurants in New York, Ernesto’s and Bartolo Restaurant, both in Manhattan. We’ve been working on his cookbook for about a year, and we’re close to finishing it. That should be out later this year, and that’s going to be called Essentially Basque. I’m also co-authoring a memoir with Greg Hall, who was very big in the Chicago and national beverage scene. His family had a brewery called Goose Island Beer, and then he started a cider company called Virtue Cider. I’m working with him on his memoir. And I am in early stages of writing a proposal for my next book, my solo book, which will be memoir-ish. It’s tough because I used up all the juicy stuff. My life has been much quieter and much less exciting since the book ended in 2021, but I do still think I have a lot to say. I have a lot of stories to tell. So I am just starting the process of getting that together. I’m excited to keep telling stories about living imperfectly, but trying my best and now being a sober person.

Visit Laurie’s website to learn more about her writing and upcoming events.

I must stress that I have no desire to depart my wonderful life, but it is only human to wonder how one might go.

If you had asked me how I would die just a few months ago, I would have predicted that I would either be run over by someone speeding along the sidewalk on a motorized bicycle or a moped or I would be killed trying to help someone being bullied on the subway here in New York City.

I also had a nightmare once about a plane crashing into me and killing me while I stood in a parking lot. So that’s a possibility, too.

But now I think I am more likely to die of ovarian cancer — hopefully as far in the future as possible. I was diagnosed with stage four in October after ten months of seeing different doctors who couldn’t find anything major wrong with me based on my seemingly minor complaints.

This cancer was growing inside of me for I don’t know how long before I found out about it. I visited a gastroenterologist last October, and he ordered an ultrasound after I told him that for months I had been plagued with vague discomfort in spots between my belly button and crotch.

A concerning ultrasound was quickly followed by a concerning CT urogram and soon after a concerning MRI. All the concern was about the cancer they saw in my body.

The brilliant gynecologic oncologist I saw after I got all those revealing scans moved quickly and was able to remove all the visible cancer during a seven-and-a-half-hour surgery in November. She took out my ovaries, fallopian tubes, uterus, cervix, appendix, omentum, a piece of my diaphragm and bits of my bowel, which means I have a temporary ileostomy bag. I started chemotherapy in December.

From what I have been told, cancer treatment has come a long way in even the last five years, and I am being treated curatively. Still, there are no guarantees, and if I am fortunate enough to get even a few more years, I would appreciate that very much.

I would like a lot more.

I am trying to maintain a sense of hope, and I have a lot of love and support from my wife Rosella and all of my friends and neighbors as well as people I hadn’t even known before who reached out to offer support after learning of my diagnosis.

I am incredibly grateful for every single bit of kindness that’s come my way so far during this scary time.

My Cat Bit Me

This is my cat Foxy. She was supportive of me during the initial stages of my cancer journey, but then she bit my arm last week. I had to get antibiotics and a tetanus shot. Thankfully, the wound has healed enough that I don’t have to reschedule tomorrow’s chemo appointment. This is not the first time Foxy has bitten me and sent me to urgent care. It’s the second time, but it’s the first time she bit me when I had cancer.

Secretly Recording Rosella

I enjoy engaging my wife Rosella in conversations and secretly recording them and sharing the recordings to Instagram once she has listened to them and given me her permission to do so, of course. Here’s a recent clip shot over breakfast:

Sexy Feet

A foot-focused OnlyFans could be in my future.