Bestselling Author & Professor

I am the author of four books, most recently Harley and Me: Embracing Risk on the Road to a More Authentic Life (Counterpoint Press), a hybrid narrative that combines memoir with research into neuroscience and biology to explore risk-taking through the lens of female motorcycling. I am also the author of the bestselling Zen and the Art of Knitting (Adams Media/Simon & Schuster), a narrative that uses memoir and reportage to explore the connection between fiber arts, creativity, and spirituality, as well as The Tao Gals’ Guide To Real Estate (Bloomsbury, USA). For six years, I served as weekly book critic for the Los Angeles Times and now review for Kirkus. For the past ten years, I headed up the Creative Nonfiction genre as an Associate Professor of Creative Writing for the MFA program at Antioch University Los Angeles. I recently joined the faculty of the Newport MFA at Salve Regina University in Rhode Island.

I am a first-generation Angeleno, the daughter of Irish immigrants. My essays on literature and life have appeared in Salon, The New York Observer, Ms. Magazine, Palm Springs Life Magazine, Coast Magazine, Climbing Magazine, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, Newsday, Literary Hub, San Francisco Chronicle, MUTHA, The Rumpus, The Nervous Breakdown and elsewhere. I am currently at work on a novel aboul the daughter of Irish immigrants who, haunted by fears that her mother’s crippling mental illness simmers in her own DNA, explores a dark mystery surrounding her father’s suicide, while her perceptions are shaped by visitations of a goth, street-smart Virgin Mary.