Anastasia M. Ashman is a career essayist specializing in personal tales of cultural adventure. She has spent ten years working for literary agents and producers of film, television, and Broadway theater. She has been published in Cornucopia, a magazine for connoisseurs of Turkey, Dow Jones Far Eastern Economic Review, The Asian Wall Street Journal, and The Village Voice. Born and raised in Berkeley, California, she holds a degree in Classical Greek, Roman, and Near Eastern Archaeology from Bryn Mawr, and lives in Istanbul with her husband, Burc Sahinoglu.