I was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts and lived in New York City with my mother and grandmother, an editor at Harcourt Brace, until I was four. My grandmother threw legendary parties for the authors and poets she worked with, and I can claim the distinction of having been bounced on the knee of W. H. Auden, Katherine Anne Porter, Randall Jarrell and other mid-century luminaries. Not surprisingly, my earliest dream was to be an editor like my grandmother, or failing that, a writer or a librarian. I was okay with whatever it was, as long as books played a central part.Somewhere along the way life took me on a detour and I ended up majoring in Latin American Studies and Spanish in college and grad school and moving to Puebla, Mexico, where I lived for twenty years (hence the Mexican themes of my first two novels). When my kids went off to school, I began to write, starting out with short stories. My first book-length project was a young adult novel titled The Ring of Leilani. This was followed by The Curse of the Jade Amulet, completed after I moved back to the U.S. and chosen as one of the ten finalists in the San Francisco-based Larsen-Pomada Literary Agency's annual contest a few years ago. Both novels are available on Amazon, as is my vacation memoir, 27 Scoops of Gelato.In addition to writing my own books, I've done literally hundreds of literary, academic and commercial translations to Spanish and English during the last twenty-five years, including several books. I also taught English and Spanish grammar, composition, conversation and phonetics at various universities in Mexico and the U.S. for over fifteen years. While living in Mexico, I did freelance editing work for MacMillan Heinemann ELT and Holt, Rinehart and Winston.These days I live in the beautiful rainy state of Washington, where I edit, translate, write and work part-time as a court-certified Spanish interpreter. When I'm not engaged in one of these pursuits, you can find me hiking, doing yoga, reading, cooking, gardening or reading (did I mention reading? ; ).