Lally Pia

Lally Pia was born in Sri Lanka, grew up in Ghana, and made it halfway through medical school before political turmoil closed down her university and she learned that her American Green Card had been bungled. She went on to work as a church organist, teacher, and ice cream decorator, as well as a scientist in a molecular biology lab. Her next stint was as the director of UC Davis’s Body Donation Program, where she embalmed cadavers and maintained a freezer full of human specimens (a thankless job that she was glad to leave after three years). Lally is a mother, grandmother, and child psychiatrist who lives in Davis, California, with her husband, Tim.