About

What do Bat Boy, Eskimo Pies, magicians, and mayflies have in common? Each of them at some point took up residence in my mind, evoking sensations, images, and words I couldn’t ignore. It’s a delight to sit with such obsessions and guide them into the shape of a poem. Sometimes my poetry focuses in on something weird or quirky or delves into the surreal; perhaps that’s my small attempt at “telling it slant” (a phrase from Emily Dickinson’s poem “Tell all the truth but tell it slant”).

Some contemporary poets I admire for their skill and talent in crafting poems that live in the realm of the funny, the odd, and the fantastic: Amy Gerstler, Tony Hoagland, Thomas Lux, James Tate, and Charles Harper Webb.

I live in Seattle, where I am a freelance writer and editor, teacher, and an associate editor for the online poetry and art journal the DMQ Review. Awards and honors include being a finalist for the St. Lawrence Book Award; being a finalist for the Floating Bridge Chapbook Award in 2004, 2006, and 2007; poem “Groundhog Turning Poet” receiving Honorable Mention in Late Blooms Poetry Postcard Contest; and being a semifinalist for the 2005 “Discovery”/The Nation poetry contest. My work has appeared in a variety of journals, including the Seattle Review, Crab Creek Review, 5 AM, Sentence, Natural Bridge, Swivel, and in several issues of Pontoon: An Anthology of Washington State Poets. I took my MFA in Creative Writing and Literature from the Bennington College Writing Seminars. I have taught poetry writing to children and adults; my “poetry appreciation for cats” class never quite took off.