I am a yoga teacher and yoga studio owner who writes poetry, fiction, Young Adult fiction, non-fiction, art criticism, literary criticism, etc. I'm also an editor and co-translator of Japanese literature and a former art critic for Art in America.

I've published 17 books but am most proud of my Amazon #1 best-seller in Spiritual Books, "Yoga Poems: Lines to Unfold By" and its follow-up, "Yoga Heart: Lines on the Six Perfections."

Other favorites are "Sacred Sanskrit Words: For Yoga, Chant and Meditation" and the "Japan Journals 1947-2004" of eminent film critic Donald Richie, which I edited.

I often write with my husband, poet and MG novelist Shogo Oketani, which keeps us on our toes--"Designing With Kanji: For Surface, Skin, and Spirit," and translation of modernist Japanese war-protest poet Ayukawa Nobuo ("America and Other Poems"). We will publish our debut Young Adult novel in November, 2013 about a female ninja and her fight to save her indigenous tribe, called "Jet Black and the Ninja Wind" (Tuttle/Simon & Schuster).

I have had writing published in Yoga Journal, Shambhala Sun, Huffington Post, Harpers, NPR's Sound of Writing, etc.

I'm the winner of a PEN Syndicated Fiction Award, PEN Josephine Miles Poetry Award, Grants from NEA/NEH, the U.S.-Japan Friendship Commission Award for the Translation of Japanese Literature at Columbia University.

Co-author of cult favorite film "Milk" which premiered at Berlin Film Festival.

love and support