Born in Basel in 1949, Rita Gold­berg grew up most­ly in the Unit­ed States, with two ear­ly years in Ger­many, where her father was a U.S. Army psy­chi­a­trist. She taught lit­er­a­ture at Essex and Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ties in Eng­land for near­ly ten years. She went on to teach at MIT and is now a lec­tur­er in com­par­a­tive lit­er­a­ture at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty. She and her hus­band have two sons and two grand­sons and live near Boston, MA.