I’m a classically trained musician and composer with an MFA in theater directing. I'm also a writer, performer, and teacher. The best way to keep track of what I'm doing is by checking my Now page, which tracks my creative output in reverse-chronological order.
Nicole Dieker Finley
Between 2012 and 2024, I was a freelance content writer with a focus on personal finance. I spent five years writing the “On the Money” advice column and the “Money Talks” interview series at Vox, and contributed to the “Money Matters” advice column at Morning Brew. You can view more of my work at Newsweek, Bankrate, CreditCards.com, Dwell, BoingBoing, Lifehacker, Longreads, NBC News, Popular Science, and The Billfold; you may also want to read my book Frugal and the Beast, a short-and-sour series of financial fairy tales.
In 2017, I published a two-volume novel called The Biographies of Ordinary People. BookLife wrote “Dieker writes with unrepentant honesty about the human condition,” which suggests that both the book and its author did what they intended. William Deresiewicz, in his book The Death of the Artist, called The Biographies of Ordinary People “a lovely, unpretentious story, suffused with feeling, that unfolds at the speed of life.” You can most easily read The Biographies of Ordinary People through Libby or Amazon, and I hope you do.
From 2022-2024, I wrote The Larkin Day Mysteries, a cozy-comedy-nerdy-mathy-theater-geeky mystery series that Kirkus called “engaging, sophisticated, and wide-ranging” and Publishers Weekly described as “breezy and full of surprises.” Get your copies at Amazon or buy directly from Shortwave Publishing.
My secular benediction “I Wish You Peace” has been a part of university choral repertoire since 2001.
After spending 20 years bouncing from one major city to another, I returned to the rural area where I grew up and married the great love of my life.
Email: nicole@nicolediekerfinley.com.