About

I was born in Tokyo, grew up in New York, and live in San Francisco. The longtime editor-in-chief of Literary Mama and co-founder of Sustainable Arts Foundation, I now serve on the board of the San Francisco visual arts nonprofit, Root Division, and continue to build community among writer and artist parents navigating creative work alongside family life. I live in the foggy Inner Sunset with my husband, a pair of fluffy orange cats, and our two grown children when they visit.

A woman smiling outdoors with short curly gray hair, wearing a navy sleeveless top and a silver necklace with a circular pendant.

photo: Carol Vaziri 

I earned my PhD in Comparative Literature from U. C. Berkeley, writing a dissertation about epistolary modes in World War II-era American novels and films; I taught writing at Cal, Stanford, and the San Francisco Art Institute. When my first child was born, I turned my focus to parenting and left higher education.

When my kids were little, I joined the editorial board of Literary Mama, where I served for ten years, including five as editor-in-chief; while at Literary Mama, I returned to writing about movies (in a much less theoretical way than in my dissertation!) looking at representations of motherhood in contemporary film.

My work with Literary Mama’s community of writer mothers helped inspire the Sustainable Arts Foundation, which my husband Tony and I co-founded to help parent writers and visual artists maintain their creative lives. We offered awards to nearly 300 individual artists, and helped over 60 artist residencies make their programs more family friendly; in our thirteen years, we made over two million dollars in grants. In late 2023, in solidarity with the groundswell of efforts toward decolonization and in recognition of the source of our funding, we spent down the foundation’s assets and returned the funds to Indigenous communities.

While editing Literary Mama and running SAF, I continued to publish my writing in online journals, print magazines, newspapers, and anthologies, including two I co-edited with writers I met through Literary Mama: Mama, PhD: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life (Rutgers University Press, 2008), with Elrena Evans, and The Cassoulet Saved Our Marriage: True Tales of Food, Family, and How We Learn to Eat (Roost Books, 2013), with Lisa Harper.

When I am not at my desk, I am probably baking bread, doing yoga on my balcony, walking in Golden Gate Park, or visiting an art gallery.