bio

I live in northern California with my husband and our three children when they are home from college. Most of our extended family still lives on the east coast and we spend time in Massachusetts and Vermont every summer.  I was born in Altoona, Pennsylvania and  grew up in nearby Hollidaysburg, a tiny town surrounded by farmlands and forests, quarries and strip mines. I attended Smith College and  Stanford Law School as scholarship student and, after graduating, I buckled down to work to pay back those loans. After practicing law in San Francisco for ten years, I worked as an advocate and grassroots political organizer for parents of kids with autism and other learning disorders.

My writing career began in 2007, in a memoir class taught by Linda Watanabee McFerrin at a Book Passage, a wonderful independent local bookstore in Marin County. I enrolled in Warren Wilson’s MFA program the following year and graduated in January 2010. Dark Card and Mom’s Canoe won the Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prizes in consecutive year and were published in 2008 and 2009, and two full length poetry collections followed in 2010: All That Gorgeous, Pitiless Song (Many Mountains Moving Poetry Book Award), and God Seed, a book of environmental poetry with art by Lorna Stevens. My recent poems are in journals and magazines including Atlanta Review, Cincinnati Review, Hudson Review, Journal of the American Medical Association, North American Review, and Poetry Daily.  I also write essays and book reviews, published or  forthcoming in American Book Review, American Poetry Journal, Cider Press Review, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere.

When asked about autism resources, I advise parents to seek out local support groups, including branches of the many national organizations that pop up when one Googles the words “autism” or “Aspergers.” Bay Area groups that have impressed me with their fierce grassroots determination and deep compassion include:
· ASCCEND
· The Aspergers Parents’ Support Group led by Stephanie Stein of Matrix Parents Network
· Autistry Studios, run by Janet Lawson
· The Marin Autism Collective, led by Karen Kaplan

contact info@rebeccafoust.com