I'm a second-generation Korean American who grew up in a suburb of Los Angeles during the Vietnam War era. A big chunk of my childhood was spent up a tree, reading novels that starred American girls. It paid off: in the sixth grade I got bonus points because, thanks to Laura Ingalls Wilder, I was the only one in class who knew what love apples* were. Young adulthood found me hunting for a place to belong; I studied foreign languages and lived abroad.

My writing is fueled by my heritage and thirty-year career as a marriage and family therapist. I fold my knowledge of human nature and cross-cultural issues into stories about people caught in-between. I am the co-author of the non-fiction book Mixed Blessings: A Guide to Multicultural and Multiethnic Relationships, and recently completed my first novel. 

I live in the Pacific Northwest, notepad and camera at the ready, and am currently reading Exiled South by Harriet Cannon and Appropriate: A Provocation by Paisley Rekdal.

*Bonus points if you know that love apples are tomatoes!