was born in the Bay Area (Berkeley) and has been a longtime resident of Oakland’s Temescal neighborhood. She is a contributor to A Guide to Oakland’s Neighborhoods (Mailman Press/City of Oakland) and to An Eye for An Eye Makes the Whole World Blind, winner of the PEN Bay Area Prize edited by veteran Oakland literary figures and activists. A former technical assistance provider (assessment specialist) to Oakland schools (East Oakland, North Oakland), she both organized and attended community events in this capacity. She has worked in many different genres. As a contributing artist to Oliver Gallery show (California College of the Arts, Oakland Campus) as part of CrossConnections, a project of CCA’s Art in Public Life division, Spring 2005 and 2006. As a writing and photography workshop instructor for teens in the East Bay, including Oakland - a project of CCA’s Art in Public Life division. Her poetry and essays have appeared recently in Phoebe, FO A RM, and Chain and are forthcoming in Brooklyn Review as well as in Bay Poetics (Faux Press). Translations of Iranian poet Yadollah Royaii are forthcoming in Kenyon Review and appear in 26 and in Strange Times My Dear, The Pen Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature. She is currently the lead writer for Golden Thread Productions Theater Company and charged with developing a series of modern “passion plays,” to be staged Spring 2006 and translating a book from Farsi to English by leader of Iranian “New Wave” poets.
