At the age of five, I self-published my first book, a shameless spoof of The Berenstain Bears about a family of nuts. Like most of my work, it's autofiction--I really did live with a family of nuts. Growing up with a megalomaniacal father and a likely autistic mother, my brother and I learned early on that the only way to remain sane was to appear in family portraits while doing headstands in our underwear.

During college, I worked as literary editor for Spindrift and graduated with a B.A. in Culture, Literature, and the Arts from the University of Washington-Bothell. My first collection of poems, Sagebrush and Cedar, was released in 2003 by Watermark Press.

Throughout my young adulthood, I wrote two novels and reams of short stories and poems. But it was finally at age 25 when I tackled my third novel that I had found the subject matter to carry me through years of writing: a young woman's loss of faith and the difficult choices she must make in her fundamentalist community. Now in final revisions, The Gods of Kittitas County is here on Wattpad for your reading pleasure.

I have published short fiction in Spartan, and I'm working on my next novel, The Life Cycle of Stars, exploring the Armenian genocide of 1915 and its ongoing impact today. I plan to climb Mount Rainier for my fortieth birthday, but meanwhile, I live at sea level in Seattle with my husband and two cats who have secret superhero identities.