Born in New York, U.S., grew up in Mexico City and Holland, where her father was serving as Mexico's ambassador, she studied Comparative Literature at Harvard and then received a PhD from the University of Oxford, under the supervision of Malcolm Bowie. Her book of essays on Magic and Poetry in Nineteenth-century France was released in 2005. She has published in journals and newspapers in England, Mexico and after five years in Berlin currently resides in London, where she is working on a novel and short stories. Her first novel "Book of Clouds" was published in the USA by Grove Press in winter 2009. It has also been published in Holland, and was published by Chatto and Windus in the UK in July 2009, and by Mercure de France in September 2009. It will come out in Mexico and Spain later this year. Reviewing Book of Clouds for The Independent, Daniel Hahn described it as an "exceptional debut novel". In November 2009, Book of Clouds won the Prix du Premier Roman Etranger in France.