Growing up down here among cousins and aunts and uncles, I have always had a strong affinity for the communal. That's why, having gone away to school, my husband and I chose to return to Houston when I started having babies, to raise our daughters near their cousins and aunts and uncles, as well as both sets of grandparents. 

My work has always been my vocation. First I taught literature at the University of Houston Honors College and spent years reading the Great Books, while writing a book of my own about a journey I took with my eldest daughter, retracing the path of a medieval pilgrim who traveled to Jerusalem and to St. Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai Desert. Then I left to write longform journalism and another book, this time about refugee women in Houston. Part of the premise of that book is the necessity for solidarity and mutual care, which I saw enacted daily by the women I was writing about. Now I work as a farm manager on a farm in Alief collectively run by women (refugees, immigrants, other local Houstonians), putting to use my gardening and beekeeping skills, 

I love to camp, especially out west, and to fix up old houses and work the land, which my husband and I are doing at a place we own in central Texas, where we have planted an orchard and where I keep my own bees. We have two grandbabies in Alaska and one on the way in Houston. I am looking forward to helping to build a new community with others here!