Koren Zailckas (born 1980) is a bestselling American writer and memoirist. Her debut, Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood, was released in 2005 by Viking Penguin and became a New York Times bestseller. Zailckas attended Nashoba Regional High School in Bolton, Massachusetts, Syracuse University and Bennington College. She is a 2014 recipient of the Alex Awards. Personal life Zailckas grew up in a middle-class family in the northeast. As a coping mechanism, she learned to "hide behind an open book." As she grew older, she got into the habit of sneaking out of elementary school classes to go and read in the bathroom or the school library. She began writing poetry at age ten, and continued throughout college. In a senior-year poetry writing workshop at Syracuse University she met mentor Mary Karr, who would later influence her memoirs. Memoir Vs. Fiction As a writer, Zailckas says her writing is informed by memoirists Mary Karr, Nick Flynn, Tobias Wolff, as well as novelists T.C. Boyle, Jeffrey Eugenides, A.M. Homes, Richard Ford, Haruki Murakami, Amy Hempel, George Saunders and Lorrie Moore. She has also admitted she is heavily influenced by music and song lyrics. Zailckas has been quoted as saying, "If you're a writer, there's a lot of inspiration to be found in lyrics. That's the first thing I do before I get to work in the morning: have a cup of coffee and put on a record." Zailckas downplays the catharsis of memoir-writing, saying, "All said and done, I'm reluctant to say writing Smashed was cathartic. For one, I think we assign that term to women far more often than we assign it to men. All too often, men's works are deemed 'literature' and women's are dismissed as 'therapy.' On a personal level, sure, it's easier to discuss old indignities. Talking, for instance, about a horrifying blackout doesn't rattle me the way it used to. I'm not convinced I've come to term with old aches as much as I've had to numb myself to them for the sake of spreading the book's message. Ultimately, I think a memoir leaves its author with more terror than comfort, more questions than closure. More than anything, I feel a growing breach between 'me' and the 'me' on the page. It's an occupational hazard, I guess. I feel sort of exiled from my own experiences." Early in her career, Zailckas said she found writing fiction