After earning her Masters in Creative Writing and Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wyoming, Judy Dykstra-Brown taught English and writing for ten years in Australia, Ethiopia and Wyoming before moving to California to study film production and to work for a television production company. She studied writing at UCLA and in the Jack Grapes workshop, where she met her husband Bob, a poet and sculptor. After marrying, they moved to Northern California and exhibited their individual and collaborative work at galleries and art and crafts shows nationwide for thirteen years. She was curator of the Santa Cruz Mountains Art Center for three and a half years. After Bob’s death in 2001, she moved to Mexico, where she has continued to publish her work in English language print and online magazines, to read and speak for various lecture series and performance groups and to exhibit her retablos and mixed media sculptures at local galleries. Her books include Agave Marias: Boundry Breakers and Border Crossers (an anthology of 10 women writers who live on Lake Chapala in Mexico), Prairie Moths (a memoir of growing up in South Dakota) and Lessons from a Grief Diary: Rebuilding Your Life after the Death of a Loved One.