I was born and raised in northern New Jersey, up in one of those corners where the name “Garden State” isn’t just ironic. In high school, I built sets and ran the sound board for the drama club and edited the literary magazine. After high school, I went to Harvard, where I studied child psychology and tinkered around with computer programming and web design. I graduated in 1998 with a degree in psychology and worked for two years in computer security; in the summer of 2000, I moved to California and started graduate school in history at the University of California, Berkeley. After coming to California, I became involved with a science fiction magazine called Strange Horizons, where I’m now editor-in-chief. I finished my doctoral program in 2006, and I’m still living in Berkeley, although that might change.
These days, I’m employed by UC Berkeley as a lecturer in the history department. I also work as a freelance writer and editor, with a couple of major clients in educational and academic publishing. When you add in the work that I do with Strange Horizons, I don’t have a whole lot of free time, but I still manage to find time to entertain myself. (These days, entertaining myself seems to involve computer games, making quilts, and/or watching crime dramas on television. I’m not proud of the crime dramas, but they’re oddly satisfying.)