Sandra Tsing Loh

Loh, who received a bachelor's degree in physics from Caltech in 1983, started out as a performance artist in the 1980s. In her “Spontaneous Demographics” of September 1987, for example, she played the piano on a flatbed truck for rush hour commuters on the Harbor Freeway. Since then, she has written books, including A Year in Van Nuys, Depth Takes a Holiday: Essays from Lesser Los Angeles, and Aliens in America; written and performed several one-woman shows, including Sugar Plum Fairy and I Worry; composed film scores, including that of Oscar-winning documentary Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O'Brien; been a radio commentator on NPR's Morning Edition, PRI's This American Life, and her own The Loh Life; written for such publications as The New York Times, the Atlantic Monthly, Elle, and Vogue; and released an album on which she performs original piano compositions, Pianovision.