Ask Edna
11 years as an advice columnist
Wouldn’t it be nice if someone could just tell us what to do when we have important questions about our lives? Surely everyone has fantasized about this, and surely that desire is part of what drives a persistent love of advice columns. From Dear Abby to Dear Sugar, advice from strangers has been a social constant for a long time.
Today’s guest was an actual anonymous advice columnist. Andy wrote a column called “Ask Edna” for eleven years, from 1996 to 2007, where he fielded all kinds of questions (many of them about office romance, ahem). This interview has been edited for clarity.
Tell me about Ask Edna.
My advice column, “Ask Edna,” was written for Wunderman/Y&R for 11 years. The last two of those years, it went global across the agency intranet.
My identity was anonymous the entire time. I chose the pseudonym “Edna” because my name is Andy, and “Andy” spelled backwards is “Edna”….well, almost! LOL.