Judith Shaw

Judith is a family psychotherapist and a writer, her primary focus on national health, food and diet. She serves on the Mesa Refuge Advisory Committee and was a Mesa Refuge resident in 2003-4, working to complete her book, Trans Fats: the Hidden Killer in Our Food (Simon & Schuster 2014). The book, which has sold more than 200,000 copies over two editions and was translated into French, sought to keep our world, and especially the children growing up in it, from the tragedy of heart disease, diabetes and associated disasters.

Her previously published book, Raising Low-Fat Kids in a High-Fat World, was her venture into the deliberately hidden world of trans fats, and most emphatically, parent’s poor food selections contributing to overweight and potentially ill children, (see: the Bogalusa, Louisiana Children’s Heart Study).

Her most recent book, her first fiction, Catching A Memory (Summer Press 2020, with the assistance of Cuneiform Press) is a collection of short pieces. Were it not for Joanne Kyger, Bolinas poet illustrious, Judith’s new book would not be. When Judith moved to Bolinas (via Berkeley, and previously New York), she spent several writing seminars at Joanne’s bench on Evergreen Road learning to “coddle” her writing, bring it to aliveness, and give her the courage to move forward from what she had previously considered “finished.” Joanne introduced Judith to Kyle Schlesinger, a poet colleague, publisher and owner of the illustrious Cuneiform Press in Austin.

Judith was the education director of the Family Institute of Berkeley for 15 years until 2000. She studied psychotherapy at the University of CA, Berkeley, completed an internship as Lecturer at the University of California Medical School, San Francisco General Hospital under the tutelage of Carlos Sluzki, M.D., and received her M.S. from San Francisco University.

You can purchase Judith’s books at Point Reyes Books and find out more on Judith’s website: catchingamemory.com.