She is a graduate of Barnard College and Columbia University. She served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador and currently volunteers as a translator and administrator on medical trips to South America that provide surgery free of charge to children. She is also a mentor at Girls Write Now in New York City. She is the author of Corner of the Dead, winner of the 2007 Juniper Prize for Fiction, University of Massachusetts Press (2008). Quick Kills (Etruscan 2013) is her second novel.