"For women today, there are no limits. We play hard, get down and dirty, and kick butt. And we're going to set new and higher standards for the female athletes of the future." — Olympian Lindsey Vonn on the power of female athleticism. Along with former professional athletes Mia Hamm and Lisa Leslie, Lindsey was named one of Glamour's Women of the Year. Read more

After presenting the high school basketball star Chiney Ogwumike with the Gatorade Athlete of the Year award, WNBA legend Lisa Leslie was able to sit down with me for a short chat. Thank goodness we were sitting, since the four-time gold medal Olympian is a whole foot taller than I am. Standing at 6' 4", the word statuesque seems apt to describe Leslie, but this belies her femininity and beauty. Read more

Thousands of cookbooks were published in the last year, but which ones are really worth buying? The International Association of Culinary Professionals, or IACP, tackled the question as it announced its cookbook award finalists for 2012 today. Among them: plenty of cookbooks from top restaurant chefs, like Jean-Georges Vongerichten, John Besh, and Andrew Carmellini, as well as new books from Read more

Like almost every young girl, I loved ballet class. Unlike the majority of my peers, I didn't quit ballet in junior high but added the sparkle fingers of jazz and the barefoot freedom of modern to my class load. And I kept on dancing through college and my 20s — I earned money for rehearsing and performing and got to tour abroad — not a full-fledged professional, but sweet perks for doing Read more

Having just turned 30, Venus Williams has been playing tennis professionally for half of her life. She is one busy athlete: gearing up for the US Open, teaching tennis clinics, selling her EleVen designs on Gilt, and promoting her new book Come to Win. Yet when I spoke with Venus recently, she seemed more like her sister's namesake, serene. Easy to laugh while maintaining a thoughtful focus, Read more