Hello and welcome to my author site. I’m the author of The Pattern Maker’s Daughter, a full-length poetry collection published by Bottom Dog Press in 2012 and a native of Western Pennsylvania, a place which has provided endless inspiration for writing — most particularly the tiny Borough of Dale in the City of Johnstown where I grew up. In 2013, I was picked up by the wind (really) and deposited suddenly in the South where I began to explore my “North/South” divide in new poems and prose while keeping themes of place, history, geography, and geology central to my muse.
Recently I was signed to literary representation with the D4EO Literary Agency, Ritu Anand, agent, for my completed novel: THE REPUBLIC OF JERUSALEM’S TRUMPETS. Literary/Upmarket: “Magical Realism in Urban Appalachia!”
Other projects include a lyric-memoir-hybrid work titled “Going to Ninevah: Tales of the Rivercane Trail,” which details my journey from a mother watering flower boxes in Pennsylvania to a woman living in a loft at ground-zero Music City in an unexpected identity switch…. as well as a budding poetry manuscript, “Trace of Salt” which traces the salt licks along the Cumberland Settlements and their relationship to exile and new life. A completed memoir, “Some Girls Have Auras of Bright Colors,” which chronicles a quirky coming-of-age with an atypical seizure disorder, is seeking a home. When not writing, you can find me teaching as an Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Cumberland University where I manage the Novus Literary Journal with students and colleagues and where I tap tap on that pink typewriter.
