Susan Volchok is a native New Yorker whose work as a licensed NYC guide is the ultimate expression of her lifelong delight in showing off her city; she especially loves sharing her deep affection for it with newcomers, who are always surprised at how easy it is to start feeling at home here and start falling in love with this wonderful town. City guiding is also a natural expansion on her career as an urban fiction writer and essayist: she has published widely in journals and anthologies, as well as in mainstream magazines and newspapers, including The New York Times. Combining broad-ranging knowledge and an insider’s comfortable familiarity with an insatiable curiosity about New York’s lesser known attractions, Susan especially enjoys leading visitors off the obvious, beaten paths—up into Riverside and Morningside Parks, for example, and beyond the basics of iconic Central Park. Yet she confesses she is one of the few longtime guides who still gets a thrill taking people to the top of the Empire State Building and watching their reactions to that first sweeping view of Manhattan and more.