Sandra Rothfork

Sandra's brother once suggested they were each given a gift to see them through life and before he could finish his sentence, she said . . . delight. Her gifts are wonder and delight -- deep rivers running through her life and work. Before moving to Santa Fe, they lived in Socorro, next to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. That proximity led to an interest in physics, cosmology and quantum mechanics and their connection to time/evolution, chemistry and biology. Like a little child, she is simply agog that we are but a pinch of thirteen billion year old stardust. Sandra is knocked flat by the fact that we, merely tiny specialized vibrations in the fabric of space and time are aware of ourselves and that we have been invited to look out on ourselves in this most astonishing way. Our existence, our connection to Earth and all of her life and the rest of the Universe and our consciousness are a profound mystery that her writing, drawings and paintings only point to. And perhaps the biggest mystery is beauty, or our perception of it. What is this beauty and why should it be that everywhere our senses alight, they are bathed in beauty, beauty that we feel compelled to imitate and create ourselves? In her writing, in her paintings and drawings, she points to the wonder and delight of being alive, the wonder and delight of consciousness. And she points to the mystery of beauty.

From the moment Sandra learned to read, from Lorna Doone to Green Mansions to Jane Eyre to The Wolf and the Dove, she loved romances, so though she has two Masters degrees, one in theater and another in painting and drawing, she began writing while living abroad (in India, Japan, Malaysia and Cyprus) because a laptop travels far better than a theater or an artist's studio. The Stardust Paradox is Sandra's first published work. The completed sequel, The Formula for Desire and the Sixth Extinction awaits publication.