Kara Cutruzzula is a writer, lyricist, playwright, and editor.

She is the author of three motivational journals: the bestselling Do It For Yourself, a collaboration with Subliming designer Tessa Forrest; Do It Today: An Encouragement Journal, illustrated by Tyler Spangler; and Do It (or Don’t): A Boundary-Creating Journal, illustrated by Jasmina Zornic.

As a playwright, lyricist, and librettist, Kara’s work has been presented at the Bruno Walter Auditorium at Lincoln Center, Merkin Hall, Cherry Lane Theater, TADA! Theater, Wild Project, and The Secret Theatre, with pieces developed by Theatre Now New York, Nylon Fusion Theater Company, Primary Stages ESPA, The Barrington Collective, Tulane University, and the New Musicals Lab at the Ferguson Center. 

She is a member of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Advanced Composer-Lyricist Workshop and the Librettists Workshop, Maestra, and the Dramatists Guild.

As a writer and editor, her articles and essays about work, creative process, and culture have been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Quartz, The Daily Beast, TIME, Vulture, and other publications. She began her career as a magazine editor at The Daily Beast and Newsweek, where she was homepage editor, deputy features editor, and culture editor. She has consulted in senior-level editorial roles at DuJour, Billboard, NextAdvisor, and MONEY.

For the past eight years, she’s offered encouraging advice in her newsletter Brass Ring Daily, which Vanity Fair called "a life coach in your inbox." 

Kara likes to describe her work as “talking about creative process and making creative projects.” She grew up in Hanford, California, studied English at UCLA, and lives on the Upper West Side in Manhattan with her husband, Colin Macdonald, and their rescue cat Lula.