A web has been a defining image for me since my childhood in Brazil. Ever fearful, yet fascinated, by the large, hairy, hopping varieties of spiders, I nevertheless had to admire the beauty and brilliance of their home-making skills.

When I moved to North America, grew older, and began to garden in the western Catskills, I began to appreciate the smaller spiders that wove filaments so gossamer, I would walk into them before I could see them. In the early mornings, I found dozens of small webs attached to the clothesline. Tiny dew drops adhered to the web threads, and when they were back-lit by the rising sun, they sparkled like the facets of highly polished minerals, grounding me in earth and water.

Air and space came next: I continued to love the way the threads interconnected giving possibility to endless variations and permutations of pathways, routes to take, or avoid, towards a center. The air-filled weavings allowed room to breathe, space to
contemplate, nodes to move from, or to stay.

As I have lived my life, I have cherished intersections of ideas, cultures, philosophies, disciplines, languages and humor.

In publishing, thanks go to Bill Proctor of Inkslinger’s Press, who saw to it that Listening to Pakistan: A Woman’s Voice in a Veiled Land, was born on Kindle in 2011. In 2018, Riko: Seductions of an Artist received a five star review and year’s Best Book Award from Kirkus. My memoir, Leaving Guanabara, was published the following year. Both were designed by the resourceful and talented Katie Holeman of KSH Creative to whom I give special thanks.

Lifelong thanks go to my husband, Tom, and our children, Andrea, Erika and Seth.