Are You Happy Now? (39 page)

Photo by Katrina Wittkamp

Richard Babcock is the former editor of
Chicago Magazine
and
New York Magazine
where he spent more than three decades as both an editor and contributing writer. Raised in Woodstock, Illinois, Babcock graduated from Dartmouth College in 1969 and from the University of Michigan Law School in 1974. Beyond editorial duties in magazines, Babcock has spent many years working as a founder of
The National Law Journal
, a weekly newspaper for attorneys. Today, Babcock lives with his wife Gioia Diliberto, an acclaimed biographer and novelist, in Chicago. Babcock stays close to his roots in journalism as a teacher of narrative journalism at Illinois’s Medill Northwestern University and Knox College. His other great endeavor is a life-long attachment to the Chicago Cubs, a team he warmly credits for schooling him in the “nuances of failure and loss.”
Are You Happy Now?
is Babcock’s third novel; his first,
Martha Calhoun
, published in 1988; and his second,
Bow’s Boy
, published in 2002.