She began her writing career while a teenager in the'60s after dropping out of high school at El Cerrito, California. Her earliest poems, published in antholo-gies comprised of young American Indian poets, were written under the penname Cheron Khanshendel. Currently, she is a Ph. d. candidate in the Depart-ment of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, where she is completing her dissertation, a voluminous bibliography and social analysis of books written by Native Americans. Besides writing poetry, she also paints. As well, she is the acting editor of the American Indian Quarterly, a publication sponsored by the Native American Studies Department at Berkeley.