Lily Koppel (born March 15, 1981) is a writer living in New York. Her book, The Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journal was published by HarperCollins[1] on April 1, 2008 and is to be released in paperback on January 20, 2009. The non-fiction book is based on Koppel's New York Times City section cover story about her discovery of a young woman’s diary, kept in New York in the 1930s, and its return to Florence Wolfson Howitt, its owner, at age 90.[2] The diary was recovered from a steamer trunk found in a dumpster outside of Koppel's apartment building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
Koppel writes for the New York Times and other publications. She graduated from Barnard College in 2003 with a degree in English Literature and creative writing. Koppel began contributing reporting to the New York Times Boldface Names celebrity column in 2003.[3]
She has appeared on The Today Show, Good Morning America and National Public Radio.