Botello, Judy Goldstein 1943-

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BOTELLO, Judy Goldstein 1943-

(Judy Botello, Judy Goldstein)

PERSONAL: Born April 17, 1943, in Philadelphia, PA; daughter of Louis A. (a physician) and Elinor (a writer; maiden name, Schloss) Wikler; married Steve Goldstein (a psychologist; divorced); married Victor Botello (a community organizer); children: two children and one stepchild. Education: Attended Duke University and University of Michigan; Temple University, M.D., 1968.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Sunbelt Books, 1250 Fayette St., El Cajon CA 92020. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Writer. Pediatrician, 1969–; teacher, 1974–.

AWARDS, HONORS: Recipient of multiple community awards for work with abused children and children with developmental disabilities.

WRITINGS:

(Under name Judy Botello) Adventures with Kids in San Diego: Places to Go, Things to Do, Sights to See, Sunbelt Publications (San Diego, CA), 1991, revised edition (with daughter, Kt Paxton) published as More Adventures with Kids in San Diego, illustrated by Russel Redmond, 2001.

The Other Side: Journeys in Baja California, Sunbelt Publications (San Diego, CA), 1998.

Contributor of articles, poetry (under name Judy Goldstein), and reviews to periodicals, including Lear's, San Diego Union Tribune, and Southern Review of Literature.

SIDELIGHTS: Judy Goldstein Botello plays several roles simultaneously, including doctor, wife, mother, grandmother, and teacher. She is also a writer with a particular interest in place. Her first book was Adventures with Kids in San Diego: Places to Go, Things to Do, Sights to See, a sourcebook for parents interested in places and activities for children in the author's adopted hometown. In her second, The Other Side: Journeys in Baja California, the author takes the reader along with her as she discovers the beauty and history of this peninsula in northwest Mexico over the course of fifteen years. Critics noted that The Other Side is both an often-humorous account of culture clashes in the author's initial encounters and the moving story of Botello's burgeoning love affair with the Mexican culture and people that began when friends in San Diego introduced her to the food, music, and finally the land itself on several trips to Baja California. Though Botello's memory of conversations from decades past is detailed, according to a reviewer in Publishers Weekly, the author also "deftly and humorously juggles family, career and relationships in travel that is both geographical and spiritual."

Botello told CA: "I used to believe that my life as a doctor and my life as a writer existed in two parallel universes, each self-contained but lacking any points of intersection. With time, however, I have come to understand that good writing and good doctoring often demand the same skills: keen, dispassionate observation coupled with profound human compassion."

"No one deployed these skills with more mastery than Dr. William Carlos Williams. His poem 'On the Road to the Contagious Hospital' illuminates, in four brilliant lines, not only the craft of writing, but also the art of medicine. With him as my inspiration, may I bring to my writing the unclouded vision of a doctor, and to my patients the soul of an artist."