Career
Her first book was, and her second book To-Do List: From Buying Milk to Finding a Soul Mate, What Our Lists Reveal About Us, a collection of 100 handwritten lists and the stories behind them, was released by Simon & Schuster in November 2007. She is the founding editor and publisher of To-Do List, a "magazine of meaningful minutiae" that used the idea of a to-do list to explore the details of daily life, and of todolistblog.com. Among other major recognition, To-Do List was named Best New Magazine of 2000 in Utne"s Alternative Press Awards, Reader"s Choice.
Cagen cofounded StyleMob, a social networking site "dedicated to real people and their style." The site started in early 2007, and received media coverage.
Cagen has appeared on the British Broadcasting Corporation, Anderson Cooper 360, Cable News Network Headline News, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, and National Public Radio"s "Day to Day" and "Talk of the Nation". Cagen"s essays have appeared in newspapers and magazines including the Village Voice, Utne Reader, and Men"s Health.
Cagen got her start as a writer in the "girl zine revolution," writing about topics ranging from the class politics of attending an elite women"s college to the taste of grape soda and the fear of being pushed or pushing someone else into the subway tracks. During the mid-nineties in New York, Cagen co-edited the self-published Cupsize.
Cagen attended Amherst College and graduated from Barnard College.
A native of Cranston, Rhode Island, she lives in San Francisco.
