[close] I grew up in the Alaskan Bush - first on a small salmon fishing boat with four brothers in Southeast Alaska, then coastal villages on the arctic Bering Strait. No TV, but read a lot of old books my beatnik parents lugged with them. I was often unschooled but it didn't matter; my parents were knowitalls, and they encouraged me to learn from local cultures and assimilate. Mom made me keep a journal so I learned to write. As an adult I left the Arctic to see the world, got degrees in East Asian Studies and Teaching English. I studied arctic ecology and made small oil spills on the tundra salt marsh to study the effects. I lived and worked in Tokyo, Taipei, arctic Norwegian farms, Crete and an Israeli moshav.
I had a fine daughter and raised her, paid rent by teaching ESL to international students at universities; at night I graded papers but I also wrote wrote novels and poems. "Flight of the Goose" is my second novel. [close]