Before poetry, I was a Social Worker with low-income families and the mentally ill and a community organizer around issues of civil rights and the anti-nuclear war movement.
My poems have appeared in Agni, Rattle, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, among others. In 2009 I won the James River Writers Contest and was named the Poet of 2010 by the journal Passager. I also won 1st place prizes in 2010 and 2012 in the Poetry Society of Virginia annual contest. My chapbook, A Thin Thread of Water was published in 2010 by Finishing Line Press.
I teach poetry in my small Virginia town, am married with two children and five grandchildren and am an avid gardener.