Malena Watrous
Biography
Malena Watrous
Malena Watrous grew up in the Sunset district of San Francisco, where she lived until high school, when her family moved to Eugene, Oregon. Eager to get out of the perpetual rain and back to a big city, she attended Barnard College, where she majored in English (with a concentration in Medieval literature) and spent much of her free time interning for a food writer, testing recipes in the tiny kitchen of a one bedroom apartment near Chinatown. After graduation, Malena lasted in Manhattan for a year, working as a coat check, kindergarten teacher’s assistant and restaurant critic for Time Out New York, all of which prepared her to teach English in Japan. She was placed by the Jet Program in Shika-Machi, the nuclear power plant town in which she set her debut novel, If You Follow Me.
Malena Watrous
