I believe in books
(The serious part of the website)
I write novels, essays, short stories, and poems because I love to write, and I always have. Books are flawed. In the US, they’ve historically over-represented white people, able bodied people, and straight people. They’ve reinforced notions of gender superiority and financial inequity. They’ve been used as tools for oppression and denigration. But… they’ve also been the opposite. Books have been the rallying cry, the pebble that brought down the mountain, the seeds of change, and the means of resistance. Books are not inherently good, nor are they evil, but they are, by their nature, full of meaning and weight and promise. As an author, my goal is to fulfill that promise in some small way.
About me…
I live in Marietta, OH. How did I get here? Long story…
I grew up in southern Illinois, went to school at Arizona State on an academic scholarship. Each summer as an undergrad, I worked in Southern Missouri at Camp Lakewood, which is where I met my wife, Raven (she’s the real power in our relationship). We got married and joined the Peace Corps, where we were posted to Ueen Wakaam on the island of Abaiang in the Republic of Kiribati.
When we came home, Raven and I headed for the Appalachian Trail and hiked from Georgia to New York before the money ran out. We moved to Colorado, and I worked as a pre-school teacher until I was accepted to grad school in the Environmental Humanities program at the University of Utah. There, I worked with Terry Tempest Williams, which was a singular experience (she’s basically a nature goddess). I wrote a lot of essays while I was in that program, many of which were published in various magazines, and which I collected for my Master’s Thesis and first book, Touch: Making Contact with Climate Change.
Around that time, Raven got involved in a PhD program at the U, so we stayed in Salt Lake City. Our two kids were born while Raven got her doctorate and I worked for a non-profit called Playworks, which is still dear to my heart. Playworks teaches social emotional skills to kids through play at recess. They are absolutely amazing (especially the Utah office). Almost ten years passed while we worked and lived in Salt Lake. We learned to snowboard and hiked a lot. Eventually, one of Raven’s mentors, Lauren Liang, heard that I was interested in writing.
By this time, I’d decided that what I really wanted to write was a young adult novel. She suggested I look at an MFA and, specifically, at Hamline University in St. Paul because they have a fantastic faculty full of award winning children’s book writers. I looked and loved it, and so I enrolled. While at Hamline, I got to work with Laurel Snyder, Swathi Avashti, Mary Logue, Brandi Colbert, Laura Ruby, and so many other talented and wonderful people that I can’t even name them all. They took my writing seriously and that allowed me to take my own writing seriously. While I was there, I wrote three complete novels in two years. I can’t say enough about how amazing this program was. Raven and I ended up graduating around the same time from our respective programs, and it was she who found Marietta College.
I love working and Living here, in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, and I love the faculty and the students the college attracts. It’s an ideal place for a working writer and teacher, and I’m extremely excited for this new chapter of my life. My goal in the next few years is to continue to hone my craft as I teach writing to students and to publish one or more of the novels I’ve been working on.