Carola Dibbell is a New York native who grew up in Greenwich Village and graduated from Radcliffe College. She participated in many women’s groups and actions before starting to publish journalism and fiction in the 70s. Her short stories have appeared in the Paris Review, The New Yorker, Fence, and Black Clock. Introduced to rock criticism by her then future husband, the critic Robert Christgau, she was moved by its mix of amateurism, literary ambition, fandom, and politics, collaborated with him often, and in her own work looked for common ground between feminism and gonzo. Her essay on women in punk appears in Trouble Girls: The Rolling Stone Book of Women in Rock and her reflections on the British punk group the Slits in the Ann Powers-Evelyn McDonnell anthology, Rock She Wrote. Her debut novel, The Only Ones, was released in January of 2015. She has been married since 1974 to Christgau, and they live with their daughter in the East Village.