About

I began writing late in life. Unlike other art forms, I've been using language all my life, so that when I turned to it as an art, I was already on solid ground. It involved a shift in perception and a discipline.

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I believe that it does not matter when we begin, only that we do so. The history of literature is full of examples of people who began writing late and produced substantial bodies of work.

 

Language is physical. I learned it with my body as a baby and carried it the whole of my life. To work with it as writers involves the discovery of a level of consciousness that has always been there but we perhaps have not until then seen clearly. I have lived a rich and sometimes dangerous life. I believe my attention to the world has shown up in the language I've stored and developed. I believe this is true of you also.

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I have a background in professional theater and have memorized much Shakespeare, Chekov, Pirandello, Beckett, and others, and I can't help but think this has shaped me as a writer.

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I have a PhD in English Literature and have taught in several colleges and universities, and two MFA programs. I find that as a teacher of literature and creative writing it helps that I can recommend a wide range of readings to students that will open doors for them in their own writing.

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I am widely published in peer reviewed journals and have written books of poems, plays, short stories, a memoir, book reviews and essays. I have received awards and fellowships from the the National Endowment for the Arts, The Massachusetts Cultural Counsel, Poets & Writers

and other funding agencies. My book The Moon Reflected Fire won the Kate Tufts Discovering Award and Blues for Unemployed Secret Police a grant from the Eric Matthieu King Fund of the Academy of American Poets. My most recent book of poems is Horse Medicine, published by Barrow Street Books in 2015. My next book, Undress, She Said, will be published by Four Way Books in 2022. I have new poetry in Nine Mile, The Massachusetts Review and The San Pedro River Review. 

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