Mona Jandali (who later was adopted by her step-father and became Mona Simpson)
was born on June 14, 1957 in Green Bay, WI. She has been an English professor
at the University of California at Los Angelis and is a novelist. She has written at
least six books. Her brother was Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple; her ex-husband,
Richard Appel, a writer for The Simpsons, named the character
Mona Simpson, Homer's mother, after his wife.
Anywhere but Here was published in 1986. It won a Whiting Award, a cash award
of $50,000 given annually to ten emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry
and plays by the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation since 1985. It was adapted to film
in 1999 in a movie with the same name starring Susan Sarandon and Natalie Portman.
Amazon reports that the book is ". . . dense with misery and amazement all tangled
together - a realistic and thus rare portrait of love."