My favorite authors in college were Beckett, Proust, Faulkner and Tolstoy. My favorite authors now include Tracy Chevalier, Geraldine Brooks, Larry McMurtry, David Sedaris and Carl Hiassen. But I like to read all genres and everything I read influences me. Born and raised outside Chicago, I graduated from Amherst College and received an MFA in creative writing from the University of Montana.  I've worked as an English teacher, a language school manager and a small business owner and have lived in Germany, France and Switzerland for various periods of my life. Although I speak German, French and Italian, my heart lies in Chicago and I write in my native tongue, which is English.

I was the table tennis champion during a three-week summer camp in 1976. But I lost the trophy.