Margaret Mann

Margaret Mann was born in August 1945 at the dawn of the Atomic Age in San Diego to an Apache/Caucasian couple. They moved to Lanikai, Hawaii in 1949 to avoid discrimination as a mixed-race family. Her father raised her as a Buddhist and she has endeavored to follow The Path ever since. Considered by some to be a congenital dyke, never having drawn a heterosexual breath, she is a lifelong lesbian (currently single). In 1997 a small blood vessel burst in her spinal cord leaving her to live the rest of her life from a wheelchair. She enjoyed a 45 year career first as an officer in the Navy, then a Girl Scout executive and then 20 years in Washington DC as an advocate for women's issues. Horribly over-educated, she holds three degrees from San Diego State, University of Michigan and George Washington University. In 2003 she returned home to Hawaii where she served as Chair of the Board of The Center, the local LGBT community center before it closed in 2008. She currently resides on the 25th floor of a senior residence overlooking Honolulu Harbor and is studying to be a docent at the Honolulu Museum of Art and makes her living as a counselor and writer. A Dramatically Different Direction is her first book.