Zara Raab

California pioneers are the subject of my Swimming the Eel, just as the drama of family life is the core of my The Book of Gretel. I live in Berkeley, a mile down the hill from the house once owned by my grandparents, a house designed in the 1950’s by my aunt, one of the first women to graduate in architecture from UC Berkeley. I grew up along the North Coast of California among the little towns around Mendocino and inland. My grandparents’ grandparents’ settled in Northern California in the 19th century, where they farmed, raised cattle and harvested tan oak for leather. Both my parents attended one-room schools. In leaving behind the rural counties, I became a part of the human potential movement of the 1960s, and that movement perhaps more than anything shapes my life and my work.