I grew up in San Jose, California, the second oldest of eleven kids, raised by radically Catholic parents who were on a mission to find the traditional church after it was modernized by Vatican II. This mission took us to Portugal and back, and from middle class stability into poverty. As a teenager swamped in the din of a small, crowded house, I found my voice by obsessively recording my life in journals—a habit that evolved into a career as journalist, fiction writer, essayist, and memoirist. After college, I wrote professionally for several different magazines, Woman's World Weekly being my bread and butter, but I always found time to write personal stories about my family, husband, kids, and pet Macaw, which I published in such places as the Los Angeles Times Magazine, the San Francisco Examiner, the Guardian UK, and the Berkeley Monthly, as well as in several anthologies, including Herstory: Why I Live in the Bathtub, and More True Stories on Life, Love, and other Inconveniences, and How to Fit a Car Seat on a Camel: And Other Misadventures Traveling with Kids (May 2008). I've been interviewed by various litbloggers, most recently Lynn Goodwin of Writer Advice, and also by some popular media personalities, like Hank Pelissier of sfgate.com and Ira Glass of This American Life. I've also narrated my stories on This American Life.

For many years I chose to keep religion out of my writing, preferring instead to write stories on the comic aspect of family life. I always knew, however, that the time would come when I would tackle the BIG one. . . the story that was in the shadowy background of every essay, short story, and radio piece I've ever done--the one that time would not let me forget. Well, I finally did write that story, a memoir called Waiting for the Apocalypse: A Memoir of Faith and Family, and it was published by W.W. Norton & Co. in February, 2009 to quite an enthusiastic reception. With very good reviews in several big papers, it was featured on NPR's "Forum," and was on the San Francisco Chronicle's best seller list for two weeks. And thanks to independent bookstores and word of mouth, it continues to sell astonishingly well, especially in the Bay Area.

In my real life, I reside in Berkeley, California with my documentary cameraman husband John Chater and our three sons who are 15, 11, and 11 (oh, and of course with Gideon, the bird I've owned for 30 years). I have several projects in the works--both fiction and non-fiction--including another autobiographical book that I can't talk about yet, but that I'm really excited about. In my spare time, I still keep a journal (which I occasionally excerpt in my blog) and coach writing to freshmen and sophomores at Berkeley High School.