Drafts, notes and scraps from a nonfiction life.

Kaya Oakes has written a half dozen books on gender, culture, religion and society. She has taught the next generation(s) of writers at UC Berkeley since 2000. Her essays and journalism have appeared in lots of places but, let’s be honest, lists are boring. A person on Goodreads once referred to her work as “maybe the stupidest thing I’ve ever read,” a line that might serve as a great epitaph some day. She has no boobs thanks to breast cancer. She lives in Oakland, California, where she was born and raised.