Kim Chernin is a guest instructor at the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute, where she teaches a course in psychoanalytic models with Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer. She is the author of two books about eros and memory, Crossing the Border  and Sex and other Sacred Games  (with Renee Stendhal); a trilogy of books on hunger, The Obsession, The Hungry Self,   and Reinventing Eve;  a novel, The Flame Bearers;  a memoir, In My Mother's House;  a collection of poetry, The Hunger Song;  a book about psychoanalysis, A Different Kind of Listening;  and a spiritual memoir, In My Father's Garden.  She has studed music on her own since the age of seven, when she first began to play the piano.