Barbara has held executive editor and editorial director positions at publications such as Grand Street, Vogue and Harper’s Magazine and at the publishing imprints Hyperion Books and Henry Holt & Company.

As a book editor, Barbara launched such notable debuts as Janice Hadlow’s The Other Bennet Sister, Rachel Khong’s Goodbye, Vitamin, Julie Lythcott-Haims’s How to Raise an Adult, and Adelle Waldman’s The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. Prize-winning and bestselling books she edited also include 4321 by Paul Auster, Trust Exercise by Susan Choi, Arcadia and Delicate Edible Birds by Lauren Groff, Coretta by Coretta Scott King, and My Monticello by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson. And as a magazine editor, she worked with Jennifer Egan, Elizabeth Gilbert, Christopher Hitchens, Jean Korelitz, Lorrie Moore, Ann Patchett, Francine Prose and many others.

Barbara has led writing workshops for decades at Yale University, New York University, Queens University at Charlotte and elsewhere. Barbara also represents writers as a literary agent at the Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency.