I was born and raised in Manhattan by a film critic father and a novelist Mother. So naturally, I wanted to be an actor. After I graduated from Barnard with B.A. in English, I moved to Los Angeles to pursue film and television opportunities.
Writing found me anyway through my fascination with performance art. An early Laurie Anderson exposure inspired me to experiment with theatrical first-person storytelling. I wrote and performed one-woman shows in New York and L.A., and collaborated with the Blue Man Group, writing scripts for their award-winning, long-running show Tubes.
My solo performing career culminated with Wild Amerika, a “mockumentary” I wrote about mating and monogamy as seen through the lens of evolutionary psychology. I workshopped and performed the piece at Highways/The 18th Street Arts Project in Santa Monica, and then adapted it for radio for LA Theater Works’/NPR series, The Play’s the Thing. I played myself once agai, and Jo Beth Williams directed.
By the early 2000’s, I had two young children, and needed to stay home, so I turned from the stage to the page, writing short essays about motherhood that were published both online and in print. My first book, You’re Not the Boss of Me: Adventures of a Modern Mom, (Kensington, 2007) was a collection of some of those essays.
My second book, The Big Hurt, took more than a decade to write. It is a full-length memoir that tells the story of two passionate, predatory, life-altering love-affairs that I had twenty-five years apart. It was published by Hachette in 2021.
In January of 2025 I lost my home, to the historic Eaton fire. At the time, I was working on a biography of my mother, Julia Whedon. Alas, all of my family records, notes and research were lost to the fire. Since then I have been turned to Substack, writing about the fire in my blog, Girl of the Burning West. I am trying to parse my experience and locate my personal loss on the much larger map of community and regional loss.
Me, as a teacher:
I have also been mentoring writers and teaching writing for close to twenty years. Sharing what I know, helping other writers find their narrative groove, is one of the richest, most creative parts of my life. I love working with writers at all levels of their careers, in the classroom, online, and one-on-one.
I have served as a mentor for PEN America’s Emerging Writer’s Fellowship, at the Hamburger House for Girls, and through Write Girl LA, helping emergent and/or underserved artists evolve into their own creative power.
I taught writing classes through UCLA’s Writer’s program for four years, and I have been teaching memoir and creativity workshops through the Writing Pad since 2021.