Syndicated Advice Columnist, "Ask Amy" Commentator, NPR

Dickinson made news around the country in 2003 when she was chosen to step into the void created by the death of legendary advice columnist Ann Landers. Readers have been impressed by her thoughtful, funny, fresh and heartfelt answers to age-old questions about infidelity, parenting, and the in-laws. Under Dickinson’s stewardship, the advice column has come of age. She tackles issues ranging from online gambling and porn addictions to custody disputes over the family pet.

A profile of Dickinson published in The Atlantic Monthly suggested that if Jesus wore a t-shirt, it would say, “What Would Amy Do?”

Dickinson has had an eclectic career, including working as a lounge singer, a substitute teacher, and a receptionist at The New Yorker magazine. She also has worked as a producer at NBC News, edited stories for National Public Radio, and wrote a column on family life for TIME magazine. Her radio stories, heard for the last ten years on NPR’s All Things Considered, have garnered her a following of listeners who are attracted to her quirky take on parenting, relationships, and popular culture.

She was raised on a small dairy farm in the Finger Lakes district of New York state. The experience, she often jokes, was “like growing up in Lake Wobegon, only with worse weather and higher unemployment." Her father wanted his three daughters to be farmers but gave up on them when they refused to compete in the local Dairy Princess pageant. Her large family has lived in and around her hometown (pop. 450) continuously since the Revolutionary War. She has described them as “hilarious, short-waisted Methodists.”

In addition to her advice column, Dickinson has had stories published in Esquire, Allure, O magazine, The New York Times and the Washington Post. She is a regular panelist on the popular radio current events quiz show, Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me, heard on 400 NPR stations. She is an occasional guest on such programs as The Today Show, The Rachael Ray Show, NPR's Talk of the Nation, and CNN's American Morning.

In May 2007, Dickinson signed a two book deal with Hyperion for a novel and a memoir, to be titled The Mighty Queens of Freeville: A Mother, A Daughter and the People Who Raised Them.

Of her role as an advice columnist, Dickinson says: “Because I so often write about personal issues and points of family conflict, readers have been reaching out to me, asking for advice about everything from their children’s appalling table manners to their sticky relationships with the in-laws. I realized that people really want to have a conversation, and I’m honored that they want to have it with me.”