I'm a former college teacher. I taught English literature and creative writing at Mills College, a great women-only school in Oakland, California, for thirty-two years. I started to write while I was there, at first poetry and then fiction. My students actually got me involved in writing by telling me that if they had to show their work to me I should do the same to them. Writing is very, very important to me. I love doing it; I feel good when I'm working at it and empty and meaningless when I'm not. I have a wonderful writer-husband who was both my first and last love (we've been married to each other three times.) And I have two great kids (boys) and two wonderful, bright funny stepkids (one male and one female) plus three grandchildren. We live near San Francisco. I've written five novels and six books of poetry. My first novel was runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize. I think that book, I WISH THIS WAR WERE OVER, is one of my favorites, and for poetry I believe I'd choose SPELLS FOR NOT DYING AGAIN. But, hey, I like them all. Lately I've been writing mystery novels—I have three so far, two recently published and one pending. All three books, besides presenting an exciting mystery problem per book, deal with two questions that deeply interest me. One of these is the mystery and glamour of ancient Egypt, the problems and secrets of that civilization. And the other is Alzheimer's, the cruel disease that many of our parents have. My father had Alzheimer's, but in a mild form. He was always loving and considerate and funny, if confused, and I wanted to memorialize him by putting him into a book. In my mysteries he and the young female narrator do the detecting. READ A Q & A WITH DIANA.