I come from an academic family. Books were omnipresent in our home, and there were never any restrictions on what we children read. We had the advantage of owning no TV set until I was a teenager, so I did not grow up with that distraction. As a child, I considered books my beloved companions, and I've always admired the art of good writing. In Denver, I work as a tutor of Spanish and German, a proofreader and editor, a translator, and a weight-training instructor, but love writing fiction and nonfiction as well. My formal education was mainly in English and foreign languages (four so far). My novel took me 23 years to write, but my nonfiction breast cancer book took just four months to write. The latter book is now getting far more attention than my novel ever did, but perhaps that's as it should be. My husband of 42 years, David Dvorkin, has had 16 novels published, mainly science fiction and horror. He and I help each other all the time with editing, proofreading, and book marketing tasks. Our son, Daniel Dvorkin, has written two science fiction novels with his father. As a writing family, we are perhaps rather unusual, but writing has always come naturally to the three of us.   

My awards connected with my language studies are all from very long ago, but they are listed on my résumé. That's on my website, if anyone wants to take a look.
I am perhaps proudest of the one award I won for my weight training program and teaching: the 1977 YWCA Sportswomen of Colorado Award in Health and Physical Fitness. I no longer teach weight training in a studio, but do teach small classes in my home. Now, my main business is tutoring Spanish and German, both at home and in the library on the Auraria Campus, in downtown Denver.