Marisa Robertson-Textor is a writer based in Brooklyn. She worked as a Russian-English translator in Moscow before receiving a Masters of International Affairs at Columbia University. The former research chief of Gourmet magazine, she has written about food, travel, and culture for The Los Angeles Times, The Advocate, O, Archaeology, and Whole Living, among other publications. Like the Finkles, she too believes that one is not a complete human being until one has read Tolstoy.