At 19, chasing a man more than triple her age, Candace Bushnell landed in New York City, where she later began writing a sex-and-the-single-girl column for the New York Observer. When Bushnell collected those pieces in the 1996 book Sex and the City, her story took on a life of its own, first as an HBO television series of the same name, then in movies, bus tours, and a Samantha-less revival series called And Just Like That …, which debuted in December 2021. Bushnell published a fictional account of her own story, Is There Still Sex in the City?, in 2019. She retained the stage rights, and now performs a one-woman show adapted from the novel, called True Tales of Sex, Success and Sex and the City. It opens with Bushnell kitted out in Manolos, a Cosmo in hand, and concludes with her version of a happy ending. As she summed it up for The New York Times: “I’m not married, I don’t have kids, and I’m grateful.” —Julia Vitale