Background: Born sixth of seven daughters, sex was not talked about in my family. Nor were sexual stereotypes practiced since we were seven girls with no brothers. Nor was much reasonable conversation experienced at home because of my father's drinking and working two jobs, and my mother's periodic hospitalization for depression. Attending college was my escape, the ambition to be a writer my life raft, and a spiritual sense of God was my guiding light. College saved me from my upper-lower-class perceptions of life, but not its economic limitations. Only by working abroad have I been able to fulfill a childhood dream of traveling around the world, and relieve myself from some of the horrors of never having enough money to survive. Influences: Every thing I ever read! From the World Book Encyclopedia and a set of “Wonder Books” (with excerpts from Dante’s Inferno), to Classic Comic books. I later loved Russian writers because they had more than one or two main characters in their novels, unlike many American novels. Since I read much psychology, and continue to do so, those authors have helped me understand human nature. In high school I read Fromme’s Art of Loving and Victor Frankel’s Man’s Search for Meaning. (http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/frankl.html). He survived Auschwitz. I also enjoyed science fiction when young, and met Isaac Asimov at Breadloaf  Writers'  Conference in Vermont. For years, I read occult-mysticism books by Alice A. Bailey, Leadbetter, and parts of Urantia.  In literature, my heroes are Emile Zola, D. H. Lawrence and Anais Nin – I prefer her novels to her journals. I also love Thomas Hardy and William Faulkner. I used to admire Hemingway, but that didn’t endure. Nowadays my favorite writer is Kingsolver. Her books are exquisite, bursting with love and compassion. Toni Morrison, of course and Alice Walker. And I recently read a highly literate and erotic novel The Alchemy of Desire by Tarunj Tejpal from India.    

These are humble awards.... surviving two years in Saudi Arabia should have earned me some kind of an award!

1. Weekly newspaper column of 350-word essays about life in the United Arab Emirates Dubai-based paper, the Gulf News, 1989-91.

2. Kappa Delta Pi, International Honor Society in Education, 1990

3. Desert photography awards from the Emirates Natural History Society of Al Ain in the United Arab Emirates, 1988, 1989

4. Michigan Humanities Grant for Acapella – a radio interview-readings with Michigan writers, second series of 13-half hour series, 1980-81

5. Central Michigan University Creative Endeavors Grant for a radio show researched in London, UK, 1980

6. Central Michigan University Grant for Acapella – a radio interview-readings with Michigan writers, first - series of 13-half hour series, 1980-81

7. University of British Columbia’s Public Reading Library Award for Writing, 1976

8. University of British Columbia Summer Grant to write a marketing booklet for UBC student writers, from the Creative Writing Dept. of UBC, 1975

9. Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Scholarship, 1973