Risa Nye is a lifelong resident of the San Francisco Bay Area. She attended the University of California, and earned master’s degrees at both California State University East Bay and Saint Mary’s College of California (MFA). Her articles and essays have appeared in a number of local and national publications, as well as in several anthologies. A coeditor of the anthology Writin’ on Empty: Parents Reveal the Upside, Downside, and Everything In Between When Children Leave the Nest, she also recently published an e-book based on her blog called Zero to Sixty in One Year: An Easy Month-by-Month Guide to Writing Your Life Story. She lives in Oakland, CA with her husband. Her writing can be found at www.risanye.com.

Less than a month before her 40th birthday, a devastating firestorm destroys Risa Nye’s home and neighborhood in Oakland, California. Already mourning the perceived loss of her youth, she now must face the loss of all tangible reminders of who she was before.

There Was a Fire Here is the story of how Nye adjusts to the turning point that will forever mark the “before and after” in her life—and a chronicle of her attempts to honor the lost symbols of her past even as she struggles to create a new home for her family.