Erika is a native New Englander, raised in Maine, who went to New Orleans to study architectural preservation and promptly fell in love with a man named Ian when they were each walking our dogs on the levee in the rain. They now live in North Carolina with our two children. She has worked as a carpenter, an illustrator, an art director for a woodworking magazine, and a cake decorator, and after many years of marriage to a native New Orleanian she is proud to say that she can make a mean gumbo and a praline that peels cleanly off a sheet of waxed paper.