I’ve been closely listening to people’s stories for as long as I can remember so I guess it makes sense that before I was a poet and essayist, I was a journalist for the Orange County Register. My first gig was covering California car culture.

That was then…

I’ve since written hundreds of essays, columns, and interviews published in traditional news outlets like Zocalo Public Square, Time, and Los Angeles Times Magazine, and literary journals like The Gettysburg Review. 

One of my recent stories, “Flourless in the Time of Quarantine,” ran in Voice of OC and lead to the most amazing avalanche of goodwill in the time of COVID. I wrote about that experience too. And if you’re in need of remembering the kindness of humans, you can read all about it, “So then what happened?” here.

One of my favorite writing thrills came when when my story, “Cuts from Bone Winter,” was published in The Gettysburg Review, after being selected by Cheryl Strayed, (yes that Cheryl Strayed of Wild fame) as a finalist for Drake University’s Payton Prize. You can only read the story in the print journal, (Volume 29, Issue 3), but here’s a trailer…

My lover’s body is a country I know well. He is hay and plain, ribs of rope in a valley. Scrub.

That my lover is my husband shows you what words can do. I alternately call him groom, boyfriend, hot date, mandate. We tell people we’re on our honeymoon even though we’ve been married thirty-four years. He is my hus-friend. Mine.

He isn’t mine alone, of course. He is father, grandfather-to-be.

My husband is dying…

Since you can’t read the whole story, I’ll spoil the ending. My husband lives on.

Once upon a time, my short fiction piece Delivery Day won the John Fowles Center for Creative Writing Award.

And my lyric essay “Ka Qua Craft,” co-written with Traci Brimhall, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

So you see, I know well the need to Write, Right My Life. I know the distance between idea and finished story. I know all the bumps between and I’m here to help guide. Do you need help to finish writing your story? We can work together on that.