Betsy Carter

Betsy Carter moves between novels, memoir, magazine editing, and journalism. She founded New York Woman and held editorial positions at Esquire, Newsweek, and Harper’s Bazaar, later contributing to magazines including O and Good Housekeeping. Swim to Me is one of her early novels and follows Delores Walker, a young woman drawn from the Bronx to the mermaid performances at Weeki Wachee Springs in Florida. The book uses that roadside attraction and its underwater performers to explore reinvention, family longing, showmanship, and the creation of an unconventional community. The novel appeared from Algonquin Books in 2007. Carter’s experience shaping magazines clarifies its attention to spectacle and the public identities its characters construct. Her wider bibliography includes The Orange Blossom Special, the memoir Nothing to Fall Back On, We Were Strangers Once, and Lost Souls at the Neptune Inn, placing Swim to Me within a career attentive to outsiders seeking belonging.