Kath Weston grew up working-class, dreamed of becoming a writer, put in time on the street, and trained as an anthropologist on scholarship at the University of Chicago and Stanford. She is professor of Anthropology at the University of Virginia and has taught at Arizona State, Harvard, Wellesley, Brandeis, and Tokyo University. Her books include Traveling Light: On the Road with America's Poor, Families We Choose; Long Slow Burn; Render Me, Gender Me; Gender in Real Time; and The Apprenticeship and Blue-Collar System.