When life feels heavy, the best thing you can do is to get out and have fun.

Now Frolic shares authentic stories to inspire your next adventure, whether sipping a cocktail at your favorite dance club or making a difference with community leaders. Whether your thing is Nightlife, Outdoor Sports, Civic Life, or Travel, we hope our collection of authentic stories whets your appetite for living your best life.

Our expert columnists bring their insights, passions, and inspiring moments to energize and motivate you in your life.

The path toward my writing career is full of twists and turns. I graduated from Savannah State University with a B.S. in Marine Science and worked several years for NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service as an observer on commercial fishing vessels before moving to Kauai, Hawaii to teach SCUBA. I absolutely lived the dream for several years before spending six months traversing Southeast Asia then starting a family, which is not conducive to the career of a SCUBA instructor. 

Being a mom and managing a dive shop, I realized that while others are talented conversationalists, my thoughts (and my grammatical OCD) were served much better through writing. After taking a few courses, I became a freelance copywriter for several years before becoming the writer and editor of WNC Business then the editor of Now Frolic and The Green Letter.

As a writer and an editor, I love being able to help others express their thoughts and feelings. I’ve often found that while people feel comfortable sharing their stories, it can be a challenge for them to pinpoint the details that stand out or make their story great. It brings me great joy to write and polish these stories and help writers, business owners, and community leaders shine as brightly as possible.

I've been writing since I was a little. I wrote my first "book" in first grade—Drama at The Mall. The drama unfolds in nine pages when two best friends get stuck at the ATM after taking a momentary break from their shopping spree to withdraw more cash. As I grew up, writing continued to be a passion of mine, and has led me to write professionally. Before Now Frolic, I've written about beauty in Glossy and about tech events with figures like Daniel Kahneman. 

One of my favorite movies is The Goonies, so I've always been drawn to the idea of adventures and exploring. It probably sounds like I should be writing for Travel, but I actually think Outdoor Sports is the best fit for me. Sports are an incredible vehicle for exploration that create natural opportunities for building connections with people and learning about different communities and cultures. Many people of my generation are more anti-social—indoors, hanging out on the couch, obsessed with social media and their phones—so I'm very passionate about this column. Outdoor Sports is the complete opposite of that, and I hope to inspire people to adventure and explore through outdoor activities. 

As a born and raised Midwesterner, I’ve always been fascinated by the wide world around me, which is how I ended up becoming a travel writer. Traveling gives me a chance to know more about the world, the people who inhabit it, and ultimately myself. 

Though I am a travel nerd, I also love to write about my home city, which is how I ended up co-authoring the book Chicago Like a Local. In addition to travel writing, I am also a lifestyle and theater writer. You can catch some of my other work in places like Yahoo, The Chicago Reader, American Theatre Magazine, HuffPo, Via Travelers, and more. (Check out my portfolio here!) 

As a queer journalist living it up in Chicago, I also have a lot of tattoos, and the number continues to grow. The one I get the most questions about is on my left shoulder—it's a sketch of Anton Ego from Ratatouille sitting at his typewriter writing the review that saves Gousteau's restaurant. Anton's love of supporting things new and different inspired me to become a theater critic, and this tattoo pays homage to that inspiration. 

With Now Frolic, my hope is to reintroduce readers to the genuine article in a landscape rife with listicles, outsourced material, and AI generation. My goal is to share authenticity and cultural awareness back into the travel space and inspire others to see the world in a whole new light.

I’m a storyteller at heart, whether through journalism, poetry, or visual art. I’m studying Professional Writing and Communication Studies at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, where I’m thoroughly enjoying honing my craft of making complex ideas compelling and accessible.

Before I found my voice through writing, I spent five years as a competitive figure skater, mastering the balance between discipline and creativity. That same precision now fuels my work as the civic life columnist at Now Frolic, where I explore the dynamic relationship between policy, activism, and everyday life, using storytelling to amplify underrepresented voices.

With bylines in Berks County Living and EveryDejaVu, I strive to produce work that sparks conversation and drives change. Beyond Now Frolic, I serve as the disability staff writer for Cabin Fever Magazine advocating for accessibility and representation, and serve as a copy editor for The Keystone Newspaper.

In my free time, I am a poet and visual artist who weaves language and art into explorations of identity, intimacy, and the threads that bind us to place and people. My poetry, appearing in Welter and Shoofly Literary Magazine, delves into the nuanced intersections of selfhood, connection, and the unspoken spaces between.

I’m fascinated by the history of religion and its impact on ancient societal structures, and drama focused on Shakespeare monologues and their accessibility in the modern world. This fascination led me to study history, drama, and creative writing in school and begin my writing career.

I’m a non-binary writer whose work typically falls under categories like memoir, fiction, or nightlife. Memoir pieces typically focus on personal relationships, self-delusion/destruction, and philosophical quandaries. My Substacks — Product of Divorce and Vizual Wizard Dance Club — explore memoir writing and dance culture. I’m also working on a debut novel centered around death and its importance in conjunction with life.

In my Nightlife column, I use new or gonzo-style journalism to explore the absurdity that follows drug use, alcohol consumption, and all shenanigans that happen between dusk and dawn. Nightlife journalism, for me, is as much fact finding about a party, bar, or the latest nightlife fads as it is an exploration of the things that bring me joy in the city I’ve called home for nearly a decade, whether that be dancing with friends, getting sloshed at a lesbian bar, flirting with medium-ugly men around a pool table, or headbanging to some garage punk band. My goal is to combine facts with experience to give readers the full messy picture of this after-hours world.