I have lived in the Boston area for the past twenty years, about ten miles from where I grew up. I have also lived in Ohio, Utah, California, New Hampshire, and New York City. And I first learned to read and write in Africa, where I rode a donkey down a dirt path to a one-room schoolhouse. It’s these two elements—the familiar, memory-laden intertwined with the new and foreign—that best informs who I am as a writer and a person. Other experiences that have influenced me include the jobs I’ve held as a teacher, bookstore manager, editor, group therapist for schizophrenics, art therapist for elderly refugees, Bed & Breakfast hostess, administrative secretary, waitress.

I went to school for poetry and began as a poet and indeed have published over thirty poems in little magazines. But then a strange thing happened to me. I wanted to write about people and ideas; I wanted to tell a story. Poetry would not allow this.

“Try writing sentences,” suggested a writer friend. And so I did. I wrote a novel (unpublished) and some short pieces (one or two got published). Next, life sent me two health crises: I underwent reproductive therapy in order to get pregnant and my then husband got prostate cancer. All of a sudden, I was immersed in drama and suspense. I, who knew nothing about science or medicine, found myself reading esoteric medical publications. And from the juncture of all these events, my two (published) memoirs were born. In fact, writing about my experiences helped me to find meaning in what otherwise would have been merely ordeals. And my training as a poet gave me the skills to hone language and manipulate metaphor.

For many years I wrote in a tiny, triangle-shaped office in mammoth brick building that was originally used as a social hall by the Knights of Malta. I was high up, on the fourth floor, where my neighbors were an eccentric Italian furniture restorer, a jazz composer, and a social service agency for El Salvadorian refugees. I liked knowing these people are around (we shared a hall bathroom) but I exchanged as few words with them as possible. I rented the office for the silence and freedom from distraction. Now that my son is older and in school, I can work at home, which is currently the top floor of a three-decker building. I am eye level with the sparrows and cardinals building nests and raising their young under my neighbors’ eaves. The birds wake me early and sing all day.

One of the dangers of the writer's life is the isolation that working alone can inevitably bring. Collaborating on an anthology with a co-editor and in direct correspondence with over twenty other contributing writers was an excellent antidote to writerly loneliness. More and more, I am finding it productive and meaningful to work in collaboration with others; fellow writers, professionals with a book idea, people with a story to tell.

Nowadays, I am writing much more about other people and much less about myself. For one of my current writing projects, I traveled to Vienna, Austria to research a group of champion swimmers who were famous in the 1930s. The swimmers belonged to a vibrant Jewish sports club—Hakoah—which fought anti-Semitism with athletic achievements. I won’t say any more for fear of jinxing the work, except that coincidentally, my grandfather once played on the Hakoah soccer team.