Jennifer Sullivan Buchwald-Baerwald grew up in Oklahoma and Kansas but has spent much of her adult life in California. Professor of Physiology Emeritus, UCLA School of Medicine, and former Associate Director, UCLA Brain Research Institute, she and her husband exchanged urban academia for the venture of living on 80 acres in northern California. She also exchanged writing fact for fiction. Some of her short stories have been previously published in Thema Literary Magazine, Tiny Lights Publications, and Uncorked: A Literary Harvest. Her debut novel, "The Levee", was published in 2013. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, received the Jessamine West Award for Fiction and won the California Writers' Award in 2010.