Claire Hsu AccomandoClaire Hsu Accomando was born in Switzerland to a Chinese father and French-Armenian mother. She spent her early childhood in rural France, separated from her father who was in China during WWII. Her memories of the war years are collected in her memir, Love and Rutabaga (St. Martin's Press), released in a French translation in 2020 (L'Harmattan). Reunited after the war, the family moved to New York when her father joined the United Nations. While Accomando graduated from NYU with a science degree, she was always drawn more to the arts. She taught History through Art and English as a Second Language in Southern California for many years. Her poetry has appeared in journals including Atlanta Review, Mudfish, Toyon Multilingual Literary Magazine, Slab, and Bullets into Bells. Her artwork has appeared in Three Hearts: An Anthology of Cephalopod Poetry, Moon Water: An Anthology by Spell Jar Press, and JustArts: Call & Response. She also has published nonfiction in Ararat, Critical Flame, Women in World History, The Christian Science Monitor, Artweek, and other publications. Claire Hsu Accomando lives in Bonita, California, and defines poetry as distillation: you start out with a truckload of potatoes and end up with a shot of vodka. Read More Read Less