I was born and raised in New York, and it’s hard to talk about my life without talking about politics. My parents were organizers for a CIO union when they met, and my mother later helped found a New York tenants’ rights organization, Metropolitan Council on Housing. I grew up during the McCarthy period helping my mother pass out leaflets on the street and watching her speak at meetings and from sound trucks.
I moved to Minnesota in 1966, working as a waitress, a factory worker, a janitor, a file clerk (I lasted four days), a receptionist (four fun-filled hours), a cab driver, a radio call-in show host, and much later an editor and teacher of writing. Politically, I was active in the anti-war movement, the women’s movement, and a Minneapolis cab strike.
I didn’t begin to write until I was thirty and went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts in Writing from Warren Wilson College in 1983. My publications include two novels, Trip Sheets (Milkweed Editions, 1998) and Open Line (Coffee House Press, 2008). The Divorce Diet (Kensington) will be out in January 2015. I have published fiction and nonfiction in a variety of magazines and anthologies. I edited a writers’ magazine, A View from the Loft, for eighteen years; co-edited a gay and lesbian community newspaper, Equal Time, for a year; and worked extensively as a freelance editor.
I live in Cornwall with my long-time partner, a mystery writer.
Check out my blog at Notes from the U.K.
