Her father, Alexander Borovsky, was a Russian pianist and her mother, Maria Sila-Nowicki, was of noble Polish and Russian descent.She spent winters and summers at her mother's family estate near Kazimierz Dolny, south of Warsaw.

She went to school in Germany, Switzerland and France, and attended Sarah Lawrence College. She worked at the Office of War Information in New York City, and at the Hoover Institute, University of California, Berkeley's library and research facilities in Paris.

She married an San Francisco Chronicle executive; they live in Berkeley, California.

Poetry

• Under the rainbow: and related poems
• Drops of glass: poems, in major and minor, new forms and old Tabula Rasa Press, 1981
• Desert spring: poems Sila Nova Press

Novels