About
Ever been to Vermont? My boyfriend and I came for the weekend from New York City and moved here the next month. More than a decade later, it’s still where I live (with that same guy, now my husband) and work as a fiction writer and web developer.
In NYC, I worked as a translator, a lit-crit citation writer for the Modern Language Association, and taught Spanish at New York University as a grad student. And if you ever shopped at either the Strand or Shakespeare & Company bookstores in the ’90s, you might have heard me order you (in the surly tone of the underemployed) to leave your bag at the door.
Since escaping from lit-crit and (sadly) the city, I’ve amassed most of the credits toward a degree in computer science. I’ve also taught human-computer interaction because the topics of cognitive science and people+tech fascinate me. Like the character Antigone in my first novel, I have an interest in robotics, but I see little difference between the impulse to create a bot or a reusable grocery bag or a cardboard box that boils water. It’s all creative, all tactile, all movable and usable.
The question I get most from people is, What’s with the name? Is it Japanese? Nope. I’m a first-generation Turk on my father’s side. In old Turkish (as opposed to the modern Turkish spoken today), my first name means “daughter.” My sisters’ first names, on the other hand, are somewhat more poetic: Sevil (“loved one”) and Kismet (“fate”). Yet I’ve always liked my name and never wished for another, even if it is often mispronounced as the happy green Muppet. Ah well, as Kermit says, “Time’s fun when you’re having flies.”
Family Videos
Here are a couple of fun vids I made of family in 2009. I used Animoto for these, which is very quick and easy (you can use both photos and video).
Seattle
