I live in Berkeley, California, with my husband, two children, and our demanding dog. I grew up in Tucson, Arizona, and that place - the desert, the border, the mix of oddballs and seers - still kind of gets to me.

I went to Smith College where I studied Greek and Latin and French. I love languages I can't understand. I tried to learn Japanese to read the comic books, Cantonese because I loved Hong Kong films. I've given up on the hard stuff. Now I'm just happy if I can figure out some of the words in Spanish hip hop. Or, really, just plain English hip hop.

My first real work experience was with a weekly newspaper in San Francisco, where I wrote news, reviews, features, columns, and so on – basically anything they would let me. Great time, very poverty-inducing. After freelancing, reviewing, having much fun with many comped tickets, I decided to get an M.F.A. in creative writing, and this was instructive, because I finally learned how to finish a short story.

Returning to the Bay Area, I started working for technology magazines like Ziff-Davis's Corporate Computing and PC-Computing (when they were still around), and moved on to web sites for companies like Hewlett-Packard, Netscape, and Pets.com. I now do contract work and worry about the global financial crisis like anyone else.