My story is short
It begins with a script for a puppet show in fourth grade that landed me in the principal’s office. I was branded an independent thinker, and soon filled my high school journals with teen angst and quirky poems. After graduating from Ohio University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism, I dreamed of being a rock critic for Rolling Stone but instead landed at an educational publishing company. Since then, I have written communications and ad copy for everything from Prada to Preparation H. In between the corporate writing, I work on fiction.
In 1999, I submitted my first short story to literary journals. War Stories was published that same year in the Beloit Fiction Journal.
Since then, I:
- was selected by Roxanne Gay for The Masters Review’s Best Emerging Writers anthology for “This is an Exercise in Detachment” (featured here on LitHub)
- won the 2017 Bosque Fiction Prize
- earned an MFA in Creative Writing through Kent State University’s NEOMFA program
- have been published in Third Coast, Timber Creek Review, The Writer Magazine, Storyglossia, and other literary journals
- workshopped with Alice McDermott, Anthony Doerr, Aimee Bender, Stwart O’Nan, Laura Lippman and others
- won writing grants and awards from the Kentucky Arts Council and Cincinnati’s Mercantile Library
Now, I’m:
- working on a novel and short story collection
- still writing for a corporation
- attempting to stay out of the principal’s office
Little Known Facts About Me:
- I dream about sharks in primary colors. It’s a recurring dream since childhood.
- I always wanted freckles.
- I think pipe cleaners are underrated as an art form.
- Someday, I will own a pair of shoes to match every outfit in my closet. It will be a very good day.