When I was in seventh grade, I had a teacher—Mrs. Lee—who reminded me of a Komodo dragon: big and snarling. She hated me. Or so I felt. When I entered that room, I kept my eyes on the floor and all but held my breath for fifty minutes. Then she assigned us our first writing topic. I wrote about my brother, Ron, and the gentleness with which he once rescued baby possums from a mother who wasn’t just playing dead. Mrs. Lee praised it effusively. My first A+. If writing could make a friend of a Komodo dragon, who knew what other miracles it might inspire? I was hooked.

I was mostly raised in Independence, Missouri. I attended Harry Truman High School, where our colors were red, white and blue and our mascot was the Patriots. So maybe you can imagine my father’s horror when I later abandoned the Republican party.

I got my B.A. in history and English from the University of Missouri and my M.A. in the same subjects from Purdue.

Most of my adult life has revolved around teaching and writing. I taught screenwriting for years at San Francisco State and at U.C. Berkeley Extension; geography in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico; African literature in Kenya; middle school English in Kansas City and Independence, Missouri; and middle school core (English and history) in Hayward and San Ramon, California. Teaching has been my second joy, writing ever my first.

I’ve written numerous screenplays and treatments, three of which were optioned. My articles on Native American issues were published in the Village Voice, the Progressive and In These Times. I also published a short story in the now-defunct literary magazine Firelands Review. I was hired to go scuba diving on almost every island in the Bahamas and write about it for the Divers Guide to the Caribbean, a doubly delightful job since it introduced me to the joys of diving in tropical water. Edgewise is my debut novel.

I live with my husband in Oakland, California. Most summers we spend a week on an Ozarks river with my brothers and their families. I love to sit and stare at the river and the altered images it reflects back. I aspire to do that for my readers: create a tapestry of reflections and characters that in some measure enriches their lives the way so many talented writers have enriched mine.