I wrote and published extensively throughout the course of a twenty-five year academic career (I was an anthropologist), thinking it would satisfy my craving life-long for writing. It didn't. What I really wanted to be writing was fiction and creative nonfiction. I've made a transition now, and I am working on a revision of a completed novel, as well as on bits and pieces of personal narrative/memoir. I've taken a novel writing workshop with Michelle Wildgen, and a memoir writing workshop with Chris Chambers, both at the Madison Writers' Studio. I would like to find (or establish) one or more groups with fiction and/or creative/narrative nonfiction writers who are interested in the ongoing process of producing work, workshopping it, revising it, and pushing it through to submit for publication. I love to read the work of other writers and offer thoughtful and constructive feedback, and I love to discuss the process of writing. I've learned that I do my best work when I know I will have friendly and critical readers waiting for me to show what I have.

I am the author of the memoir The View From Breast Pocket Mountain. Winner of the SPR Book Awards GOLD PRIZE and the Book Readers Appreciation Group Medallion. 

For 15 years I wrote the column "Crossing Cultures" for The Japan Times (Japan's oldest and largest English-language newspaper) and the column "Another Look" for Chunichi Shimbun, a Japanese daily.  

I am originally from NYC and have lived in rural Japan since 1975. I'd welcome interacting with a group interested in and/or writing memoir and creative non-fiction.