Books & writing
Visionary fiction, contextual poetry, and true stories.
All circling the same questions: what have we buried, and what would it take to remember it.
Visionary fiction · climate fiction · ecofeminist fiction
The Swallow and the Nightingale
A modern fable about a 4,000-year-old secret carried through time by the birds. While trying to save her scientific reputation, Berkeley scientist Deborah Wright discovers that the dying swallows at San Juan Capistrano are singing a human song — and her daughter makes an impossible request. Guided by an ancient Sufi master, Deborah comes to see that the moral issue of our time isn't who you love, but how we treat each other and the planet.
Poetry · contextual poetry
The Sanctuary of Artemis
Contextual poetry integrates the knowledge of science and history with the language of poetry. This collection explores the roots of Western patriarchal culture through evolution, religion, neuroscience, mythology, and linguistics, following Iberall's travels from Prague and the Nazi concentration camps to Greece and the Aegean Sea, across three sections: Birth, Death, and Rebirth.
Memoir · creative non-fiction
From Whence Comes Love
Born into a wealthy Jewish family in Berlin, Anne M. Gilbert found safety ripped away as the world turned upside down with the rise of Hitler. A member of British secret military intelligence, Gilbert's gripping search across continents for love and safety is told against a backdrop of multiple wars and history — as told to and ghostwritten by Thea Iberall.
Scientific writings
Before the poems, there was the Ph.D. Thea spent her earlier career studying the human hand and the robots built to imitate it — work that still shapes how she writes today.
Scientific monograph · neuroscience & kinesiology
The Grasping Hand
With Christine L. MacKenzie. An interdisciplinary account of how the human hand plans and executes grasp, drawing together experimental psychology, kinesiology, robotics, neural networks, and rehabilitation into a common vocabulary for researchers studying the hand under the brain's control.
Edited volume · robotics
Dextrous Robot Hands
Co-edited with Subramanian T. Venkataraman. Bringing together experimental psychologists, kinesiologists, and engineers, this collection explores the parallels between human and robotic hands and asks how the next generation of dexterous robot hands should evolve.
Physics of complex systems
Homeokinetics: The Basics
By Arthur S. Iberall, Thea's father and a founder of the field, edited by Thea Iberall. A primer on homeokinetics — the physics of complex systems, from galaxies to social systems.