I grew up in Champaign, Illinois, and finished my MA in Teaching English as a Second Language in 1999 at the University of Illinois, becoming an Instructor of Academic Writing. Not until 2010 did I begin writing fiction, and when I did, I quickly realized I had a lot to learn, and unlearn.
Over the course of a few years, I took writing classes with local author Amy Hassinger, as well as summer sessions at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop.
In the meantime, I published a photography project with my friend Sheila Daniels, called HOW MUCH DO YOU WEIGH?, which aimed to pierce the stigma around women’s disclosure of their weight. You can read more about that here.
And then in 2015, while working in my subsequent position of Appraiser of Art, I was witness to the discovery of an extraordinary correspondence between a poetry teacher and a scientist, spanning the years 1918-1923. The more I read, the more my imagination was seized by their story, and so began the long march toward harnessing its magic into a novelized account of their relationship, titled LOVE AND CONDUCTIVITY.
I finished writing it under the mentorship of Lisa Cron and Jennie Nash’s Author Accelerator program, and was coached directly by Erin Lindsay McCabe, author of the historical fiction novel I SHALL BE NEAR TO YOU.
I still live in Champaign, with my husband, two children, and a menagerie of cats.