I was born in a backwater town in Oregon—Portland—where it rained steadily throughout my entire childhood. Because I couldn’t go outside to play, I read everything within reach—cereal boxes, teen magazines, instruction manuals, encyclopedias (I got up to the Rs), comics, and Kierkegaard. The next time I looked up, 18 years of my life had passed, so I went to college in Boston and got a degree in journalism, figuring it would be a long, enduring career because—of course—people will ALWAYS read newspapers. 

        The Siren call of the West Coast pulled me back, and I worked at the Los Angeles Times as an editor, writer, and travel columnist for 15 years. In between, I published essays in the books Chocolate for a Woman’s Spirit and Chocolate for a Mother’s Heart. And—this is a little bit embarrassing—I won a Harlequin Books romance essay contest. The grand prize was a trip for two to Hawaii, where I learned to scuba-dive, a sport I became so passionate about that I gave up traveling to cold countries in favor of hot countries with colorful fish.

One of those hot countries was Vietnam where, to my disappointment during a reef dive, the fish were as small as guppies. The big ones had all been eaten. But when the Great Recession hit, my husband, son, and I moved to Ho Chi Minh City for 2½ years—becoming the small fish in a big city.

I have also written for numerous publications, including Asia Life magazine;  Chicago Tribune; Baltimore Sun; Christian Science Monitor; Augusta Chronicle; Los Angeles Daily News; Orlando Sentinel; The Standard—China's Business Newspaper; and earlier in my career, a bunch of tiny newspapers across the country that I’m pretty sure still owe me money. Oh, and I’m mentioned in Garner’s Modern American Usage as a perfect example of what not to do: In a travel article on Thailand, I used the word “awaited” instead of “waited.”  Bad me, but, hey, famous bad me!

 

THE AUTHOR

Volunteering at Go Vap Orphanage.

Beautiful baby wouldn’t let go.

Coffee break with Tin and Homie.