I had two childhoods. One was as a kid in Germany, the other as a teen in California. Now, my husband and I live in Seattle, WA. I was passionate about reading and wanting to be a writer from early on. Growing up in post-WWII Germany, I wrote poetry and short stories, and I read everything I could get my hands on, no matter if it was the classics or dime-store novels. I learned to appreciate Schiller and Goethe, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, and, finally, Shakespeare. He says it all! In college I also discovered contemporary writers and learned to tell good from bad. I earned a B.A. in English from California State University at Los Angeles, where I studied literature, poetry, novel & short story writing. I worked as a press agent at a few Hollywood PR companies until I experienced major burn out. Hollywood stars are sooo narcissistic! I traveled & worked at too many jobs to count. In Seattle I found not only my husband, but a home in banking administration & human resources. I kept writing. I kept learning, attending workshops and writers' groups. Finally, I published my first novel, wrote another, and I'm still writing.   Besides writing and publishing fiction, I serve as volunteer contributor/translator to PBS News Hour, and as classroom volunteer at a local community college. In addition, I hold a most rewarding position with Kent Lutheran Church, the little church with the big heart that embraces all, cares for the homeless and hungry, and for our brothers and sisters in war-torn South Sudan. There are certain books I associate with difficult times in my life. F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Styron came at a bad time, but their sad stories lifted me up and I reveled in their wonderful words. Shakespeare was a writer/poet I discovered in my youth and read in the William Schlegel German translation, and later in English in college. I read the Russian novelists like Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Pasternak when I was much too young. I loved them for their complex story lines, like rivers merging into one sea. And I loved them for describing the Russian land I came from but didn't know. As I matured, I discovered Graham Greene, who called his novels "entertainments," but some of them, like "The Honorary Consul," I'd call heartbreakers. I feel a kinship with John Irving and Michael Ondaadtje as well for the meandering stories they write, for the time they take to develop character. And I certainly don't mean to slight the many wonderful women writers like Jane Austin, Doris Lessing, Ann Patchet, Dorothy Allison, Annie Proulx, and so many more, male and female.

B.A. English, California State University at Los Angeles