Brenda Webster was born in New York City, and educated at Swarthmore, Barnard, Columbia, and Berkeley, where she earned her Ph.D. A top-rated author on Redroom.com, she is a novelist, freelance writer, playwright, critic and translator who splits her time between Berkeley and Rome. For many years she has been President of PEN West American Center. She is the author of four previous novels, SINS OF THE MOTHERS (Baskerville; 1993), PARADISE FARM (SUNY; 1999), THE BEHEADING GAME (Wings Press; 2006), which was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award, and VIENNA TRIANGLE (Wings Press; 2009). Her memoir, THE LAST GOOD FREUDIAN (Holmes and Meier; 2000) received considerable critical praise. In 2007, the Modern Language Association published Webster's translation (from Italian) of Edith Bruck's Holocaust novel, LETTERA ALLA MADRE. Her forthcoming play, "The Murder Trial of Sigmund Freud," was inspired by VIENNA TRIANGLE but goes beyond the story of Tausk and Freud to chronicle Freud's relationships with women patients, disciples, and his family. It was written in collaboration with Meridee Stein, who conceived the idea of a play and brought to the table many stimulating ideas and twenty years of experience in the theater. Additionally, Webster has written two controversial and oft-anthologized critical studies, YEATS: A Psychoanalytic Study (Stanford) and BLAKE'S PROPHETIC PSYCHOLOGY (Macmillan). She translated poetry from the Italian for THE OTHER VOICE (Norton) and THE PENGUIN BOOK OF WOMEN POETS. She is co-editor of HUNGRY FOR LIGHT: The Journal of Ethel Schwabacher (Indiana; 1993), which reveals the life of an abstract expressionist painter, her mother. More information about the author can be found at BrendaWebster.com