Frances is an award-winning writer and editor with 20-plus years in publishing, including books, magazines, print, and digital. Former senior editor of national womens' magazines, she now edits tech books, teaches writing workshops, and serves as writing coach and consultant on creative and technical projects.

 

Her short stories and personal essays appear in numerous literary journals, including The Sun, Tin House, Superstition Review, Rick Barthelme's New World Writing. Her commercial writing includes feature articles, interviews, and book reviews for Good Housekeeping, San Francisco Chronicle, Martha Stewart's Whole Living, and other consumer magazines. The author of two biographies and a memoir, To Have Not, about growing up poor in 1970s San Francisco, she is now at work on a book about learning to surf at age 36.

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As founder, director, and chief bottle washer of the grant-funded Community Memoir Project, she also brings occasional free memoir-writing workshops to public libraries and community centers, and publishes anthologies of these under-represented voices.