Freudenberger is a literary prodigy who rose from assistant at the New Yorker to award-winning author with astonishing (and jealousy-inducing) speed.

The daughter of television writer and playwright Daniel Freudenberger, Nell was born and raised in New York and scored her first book deal when she was a 26-year-old New Yorker assistant. With encouragement from then-fiction editor Bill Buford, Freudenberger published a story—her first in print, accompanied by a doe-eyed photo—in the magazine's 2001 debut fiction issue. She quickly signed with super-agent Binky Urban of ICM, who managed to whip up a frenzy among publishers desperate to write a huge check for a book yet to be written. Freudenberger reportedly turned down an offer of half a million from Hyperion in order to work with her chosen editor, Daniel Halpern at Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins, for a comparatively paltry $100,000. Such overnight success and the ensuing widespread jealousy prompted Curtis Sittenfeld to coin the catchy neologism "Schadenfreudenberger."

Her first book, 2003's Lucky Girls, based on her post-grad travels around India and Thailand, received positive—if occasionally grudging—reviews, and won the PEN/Malamud award for short fiction. In 2006, she published her debut novel The Dissident, about a Bejing artist and activist transplanted to Los Angeles, to more mixed reviews, and since then has stuck to travel writing and book reviews for various publications. [Image via Getty]