Adrienne Brodeur did not know she was going to be a writer. She received a BA from Columbia College in Urban Studies. She has a MGA - Master in Government Administration - from U. Penn. With two writer parents, she avoided the world of letters for as long as she possibly could.

Adrienne grew up in New York and Massachusetts, spending summers on Cape Cod. After college, being a typically idealistic (going-to-save-the-world) twenty-something year old, she moved to California to pursue a career in politics and public policy. At first she loved her work, however, after about six years, it dawned on her that if she followed her current trajectory, she'd soon be a bureaucrat. Not her life's ambition. Plus she noticed that she wasn't reading political journals, only literary ones.

So in 1994, Adrienne upended her life. She pulled up stakes and left a nice home on Mission Bay in San Diego and a secure job in county government to move to New York City, where for about the same monthly ding, she moved into a tiny studio apartment above a restaurant called Curry-In-A-Hurry, all to try to break into publishing. After a lean year of struggling to get a (paying) gig at a literary magazine, she decided to start her own out of her tiny apartment. A year later, Zoetrope: All-Story was born. Co-founded with filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, Adrienne was the editor in chief of Zoetrope: All-Story until 2002. During her tenure, the magazine won numerous prizes, most notably the National Magazine Award for Best Fiction in 2001. She also directed Zoetrope's annual writers' workshop at the Coppola's resort in Belize, and edited two anthologies of the magazine's best stories.