Anne is the daughter of pulmonary physiologist Michael Goldman and food writer Barbara Goldman. She was born in Philadelphia in 1960 but spent her growing up years in Montana, Minnesota, and Massachusetts. Before becoming a writer and teacher, Anne held a variety of jobs—many of them strangely if tangentially related to language. She digitized the letters for Adobe System’s font Times New Roman when this company was still a startup (alas, without stock options), prepared a weekly arts column for the Portland newspaper Williamette Week, pruned banana trees and picked grapefruits while learning Hebrew in Israel, and delivered the San Jose Mercury News to help support herself through Stanford University.

Aside from a three-year sojourn in Boulder, Colorado, where she taught in the University of Colorado’s English Department, Anne has spent her writing and professional life in the California Bay Area, where she settled in 1978 and earned a Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Berkeley in 1993.

Featured Publications

Stargazing in the Atomic Age: Essays, University of Georgia Press, 2021

"Half Here," Volt 26 (2022)

"Firefall," Wildsam Field Guides: Napa and Sonoma (2020)

"Darwin and Dickinson among the Heliotropes," The Georgia Review (Fall/Winter 2018)

"The Kingdom of the Medusae," Southwest Review (Spring 2016)

"Hurry Up Please," Tin House Open Bar (November 2015)

"Travels with Jane Eyre," Georgia Review (Fall 2014)

"Souvenirs of Stone," Southwest Review (Fall 2013)

“An Ode to Energy,” Southwest Review (Winter 2011)

“Wild Things,” The Pedestrian (Summer 2010) 

“Questions of Transport: Reading Primo Levi Reading Dante,” Georgia Review (Spring 2010)

“Double Vision,” Gettysburg Review (Summer 2009)

“Listening to Gershwin,” Georgia Review (Summer 2008)

“Soulful Modernism,” Southwest Review (Winter 2008)

“Reading Bellow,” Michigan Quarterly Review (Winter 2008) 

“Stargazing in the Atomic Age,” Georgia Review (Summer 2006)
 

Featured Honors

Independent Publisher Award Silver Medal for the Essay 2022 (Stargazing in the Atomic Age)

Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2021 (Stargazing in the Atomic Age)

Pushcart Prize nominee 2019

The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2017 "Notable Essay"("The Kingdom of the Medusae")

The Best American Travel Writing 2015 "Notable Essay" ("Travels with Jane Eyre")

"Stargazing in the Atomic Age" featured on the Georgia Review "Vault" 2014

Pushcart Prize nominee 2012

Pushcart Prize XXXIV  2010 “Special Mention” (“Soulful Modernism”)

Magazine Association of the Southeast 2009, Best Essay, silver ("Listening to Gershwin")

National Magazine Awards 2007 nominee, essay (“Stargazing in the Atomic Age”)

The Best American Essays “Notable Essay” 2007, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2019

Featured Grants

Israel Institute Faculty Development Grant (to prepare a course on Amos Oz)

Goldstein Award for Excellence in Scholarship, Sonoma State University

National Endowment for the Humanities grant and “We the People” project award

Junior Faculty Development Award, University of Colorado, Boulder

Ahmanson/Getty Postdoctoral Fellowship, Clark Library, University of California, Los Angeles

Chancellors Dissertation Year Fellowship, University of California, Berkeley

View PDF of Anne's curriculum vitae here: