At nineteen, I left Malaysia to attend Bennington College in Vermont, and was the last person off a jumbo jet that landed during a blizzard. Some little while after that, NASA put my name on a spacecraft.

Along the way, I learned how to think (keeping the habit of geeking out on details and catching holes in the logic of things, though I left NASA), how to write, how to paint, how to be creative and yet sensible, and how to teach math to undergraduates.

The pleasure of teaching led me to learn how to edit from bestselling historical novelist Beverly Swerling, who sent me my first clients, and I continue to learn from the best, recently taking a class hosted by Jane Friedman and taught by Allison Williams.

My own writing has appeared in various literary magazines, including The Massachusetts Review, The Margins, Hyphen, the Asian American Writers Workshop (AAWW) post-9/11 anthology Topography of War, Duende, The Literary Review, Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine, The Gateway Review, et al. I have been shortlisted for the Flannery O’Connor short-fiction collection award, the Hyphen/AAWW short fiction award, twice longlisted for the Bath Novel Award and once for the Mslexia Novel Award.

I offer developmental editing and writing coaching, especially of novels and memoir, and bring to it all my skills and life experience.

For sanity and perspective, I paint. My watercolor and ink art can be purchased on Etsy.