Sandra Tsing Loh

Sandra Tsing Loh (born 11 February 1962) is a Los Angeles, California-based writer, actress, performance-artist, pop-culture analyst, and radio commentator.

Life and career

Loh is the daughter of a Chinese father^[1] and a German mother. She was raised in Malibu, Southern California, and after attending Malibu Park Junior High School was bussed south to Santa Monica High School, where she was active in the computer-and-engineering-related "Olive Starlight Orchestra" and founded the performance-arts group and civic volunteer organization "Young Bureaucrats, Of Course (YBOC)".^[2] She also played violin in the Samohi school orchestra.

Loh graduated from Caltech with a BS in Physics; she returned in 2005 to deliver its commencement speech. She is also a graduate of the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California. Her early career as a performance artist included a piano concert on a freeway overpass in Downtown Los Angeles, and one in which she distributed hundreds of one-dollar-bills. She went on to perform a number of well-received autobiographical one-woman shows, in which she developed a particular form of observational humor. Her delivery style is generally ironic and spoken somewhat quickly.

Loh gained some national notoriety when KCRW canceled her weekly radio commentary, The Loh Life, after an engineer neglected to bleep her on-air utterance of the word "fuck" during a segment on knitting that aired on 22 February 2004.^[3][4] The Loh Life was soon after picked up by the other Los Angeles NPR affiliate, KPCC. She is the host of The Loh Down on Science, a daily radio show, and is a regular commentator on NPR's Morning Edition, PRI's This American Life, and other public radio programs.

Loh is the author of several books, including the semi-autobiographical A Year in Van Nuys. She has also written reviews of books about parenting, feminism, and several other topics for The Atlantic, where she is a regular contributor. Loh appeared in yet another one-woman show, "Mother on Fire," at the 24th Street Theatre in Los Angeles between October 2005 and March 2006. She made a brief cameo appearance in the 2006 film Unaccompanied Minors.^[5] She is featured in the book Part Asian, 100% Hapa by artist Kip Fulbeck.

Loh wrote about her divorce in a 2009 article for The Atlantic, where she has been a contributing writer for several years, focusing mostly on parenting and family issues. She explained at the time that, as a parent and full-time writer, "I did not have the strength to 'work on' falling in love again in our marriage."^[6] She also admitted to cheating on her husband.^[7]

Work

Discography

• Pianovision (1991) K²B₂ Records

Bibliography

• Loh, Sandra Tsing (2008). Mother on Fire. Crown. ISBN 978-0-609-60813-5. 
• Loh, Sandra Tsing (2001). A Year in Van Nuys. Crown. ISBN 0-609-60812-6. 
• Loh, Sandra Tsing (1997). If You Lived Here, You'd Be Home By Now. Riverhead Hardcover. ISBN 1-57322-068-X. 
• Loh, Sandra Tsing (1997). Aliens in America. Riverhead Books. ISBN 1-57322-627-0. 
• Loh, Sandra Tsing (1996). Depth Takes a Holiday: Essays From Lesser Los Angeles. Riverhead Hardcover. ISBN 1-57322-031-0. 

References

External links

• Sandra Tsing Loh official website
• The Loh Life Audio archive of her radio commentaries at KPCC-FM
• The Loh Down Audio archives of her radio commentaries on the public radio program, Marketplace
• 2005 Caltech commencement speech
• Audio interview with Sandra Tsing Loh on public radio program The Sound of Young America
• Sandra Tsing Loh articles on Byliner
• Sandra Tsing Loh at the Internet Movie Database