Phyllis Mattson was recognized as an “Achiever in Letters” by the National League of American Pen Women, February, 2006. An excerpt from her memoir, War Orphan in San Francisco: Letters Link a Family Scattered by World War II, appeared in HSE’s Above Ground.
Mattson was a community college teacher of Anthropology and Health Sciences in Silicon Valley. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, received graduate degrees in Anthropology from the University of Wisconsin and Public Health from Harvard. She started her career in health research, culminating in a book, Holistic Health in Perspective in 1981, then turned to teaching. In 1989-90 she taught English at Shandong University in China, and in 1994 joined the Peace Corps in Nepal. She has two children and two grandchildren.
