Candace Bushnell is the creator of the hugely popular Sex and the City that introduced the world to Carrie Bradshaw, who has since become an iconic role model for single girls living in the big city. Her dark and funny take on modern womanhood inspired the hit series on HBO starring Sarah Jessica Parker and two successful film sequels. Her novels, The Carrie Diaries and Summer and the City take readers back to Carrie’s early years in high school and her first experience of her beloved New York City. The Carrie Diaries is also being developed for a CW television series.

Like her famous heroine, Bushnell moved to New York City at the age of 19. Bushnell, born in 1958, grew up in nearby Connecticut. She began her professional writing career at 19, when she sold a children’s story to Simon & Schuster. Though the book was never published, she had her start in publishing. After studying at NYU, she wrote freelance articles for Mademoiselle, Esquire and Self magazines before landing her own column, “The Human Cartoon,” in HAMPTONS magazine. In 1994, she began writing the “Sex and the City” column for The New York Observer, which led to a book contract in 1995.

Bushnell has also published the best-selling novels 4 Blondes, Trading Up, Lipstick Jungle, and One Fifth Avenue. The Mark Gordon Company and ABC optioned her novel, One Fifth Avenue for television series. In 2006, she won the Matrix Award from the New York Women in Communications, which recognizes “women who have changed the world.” Bushnell also received a Spirit of Achievement Award from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.