Julia Sidorova is a Clarion West 2009 graduate. She has a Ph.D. in molecular genetics and she spends her days as a biomedical scientist at the University of Washington, Seattle, messing with cultured human cells, for the most part. The rest of the time she writes speculative fiction. She likes feeding hummingbirds, doing things the hard way, and making pronouncements on human nature, history, politics, finance, and other topics outside her area of expertise.