I’m a writer, artist, and literary curator.  Walking, drawing, moving, witnessing, writing. My work frequently draws on my background as an interdisciplinary performer, and often explores memory, history, and reconciliation. 

Born on Hope Street in downtown Los Angeles and grew up in Culver City, where my dad was the local Rexall pharmacist and my mother was a devoted Head Start teacher. Reed College, B.A. in Literature; Naropa Institute, studied dance and theater with Barbara Dilley, Meredith Monk, Lanny Harrison, Ping Chong. San Francisco State University, M.A. in Interdisciplinary Arts.  In 1976, together with storyteller/dancer Susan Banyas and poet John Marron, we formed an ongoing interdisciplinary performance collective.

 In 1993, I founded—and was for twenty-five years the curator– of the award-winning ALOUD literary and performance series for the Los Angeles Public Library. This nationally-recognized series encouraged civic dialogue, critical thinking, and an appreciation of wonder. The series included poets, scientists, musicians, philosophers, painters, activists, novelists, tightrope walkers, and one Seeing-Eye dog.  

Artist residencies and collaborations at Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Captiva Island, FL; Warsaw Bauhaus, Warsaw; Blue Mountain Center; Mesa Refuge, Ucross Foundation; and The Firehouse, San Francisco; Open City Festival, Lublin. Grants and fellowships from National Endowment for the Arts; California Arts Commission; Adam Mickiewicz Institute; The Germanacos Foundation; Danish Arts Foundation. Awarded 2018 Chora Prize from Metabolic Studio, in acknowledgment of projects of originality and merit that “stimulate the incorporation into institutions of ‘out of the box’ ideas.”  

Clients include: Skirball Cultural Center (interviews with Anne Berest; Nora Krug; Joy Harjo; Rebecca Donner; Maria Tatar; Olga Tokarczuk); Broad Museum (literary programming for Jasper Johns exhibition and for Shirin Neshat exhibition); Phil Glass Days and Nights Festival;  Villa Aurora/Thomas Mann House (interviews with Jenny Erpenbeck; Sundance Institute (consultant to Non-fiction Writers Fellowship Program). Guest curator for PEN World Voices Literary Festival 2023 and 2022.

I write and draw in a hut on a north-facing slope in the Silverlake neighborhood of LA, where I live with my husband, sculptor Lloyd Hamrol.  

On the board of the Sam Francis Foundation; Advisory Boards, Adopt a Village in Guatemala and Warsaw Bauhaus Foundation; Co-director the Los Angeles Institution for Humanities at USC.

Literary representation: Betsy Amster Literary Enterprises.

photo/collage: Beth Thielen

website design: Jennifer Essen