We are excited to add two new regular contributors to our Lustre roster. Michelle Larsen is a top 8% real estate broker with Douglas Elliman in New York City. Alice Whitmore is an author and blogger.

Michelle Larsen.

Michelle was born and raised in Rochester, New York but has called New York City home for almost forty years. Her passion for art led her to study painting and move to Italy where she studied conservation. Michelle returned to New York where she raised her family and has remained deeply involved in the community ever since.

Today, Michelle is a licensed associate real estate broker at Douglas Elliman. She is also a trustee of the National Institute for Social Sciences, serves on the Lenox Hill Hospital Auxiliary Board, and is a member of the New-York Historical Society, the New York Landmarks Conservancy, Upper East Side Historical District, and Carnegie Hill Neighbors. She previously served on the Phoenix House Steering Committee. Before working in real estate, she was in publishing, as the director of new business development at Scientific American Magazine and advertising manager at NASA Tech Briefs.

Alice Whitmore.

“You can take the girl out of the Midwest, but you can’t take the Midwest out of the girl.” So says Alice Henry Whitmore, a/k/a Lutheran Liar, whose career in advertising brought her to New York some forty years ago. Before retirement, she wrote copy for clients like Hershey and American Express for agencies like Ogilvy and Doyle Dane Bernbach. Today she channels her many experiences into her humor blog.

Alice’s letters on topics as varied as what happens to furniture left out on the sidewalk, why high-end handbag sales are recession-proof, and how her Swedish family serves lutefisk have been printed in the New York Times, and dozens of her anecdotes have appeared in the Times’ Metropolitan Diary. She is currently working on a book, a collection of her true-life episodes tentatively titled “You looked so nice I almost didn’t recognize you”: Stories Too Funny To Be Fiction. Alice is eager to share her wry point of view with Lustre readers.