There are some stories, some pieces of writing, that stay with you forever.  You remember where you were when you finished them. They change something deep inside you.  You get so lost in them that when you reemerge into the world, you feel like you might have become a little different person.   That’s how I’ve always felt about Meghan Daum’s essays, particularly the ones collected in her book, My Misspent Youth, and that’s why I jumped at the chance to profile her for Poets & Writers Magazine, a story which appears in the issue that’s on stands now.  Daum has had quite a circuitous route to Los Angles, via Nebraska, since her famous farewell to New York City, and much of that journey is chronicled in her great new book, Life Would be Perfect If I Lived In That House.  More about her story as a writer is chronicled in my profile of Daum, who is now a columnist for the L.A. Times, who still writes at the top of her game and who has settled, for the moment, in California.