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Storyteller. I write literary fiction: stories big on character and heart, usually twisting and suspenseful, often dark and funny, with historical tensions swirling under the surface and flashes of fabulism and heightened reality. Midwestern gothic, anyone? In this space, I also write short essays and poetry, micro-fiction, and updates on publications and life.

Dreamer. See the paragraph above.

Survivor. Cancer survivor, mother to four, I’ve divorced, remarried, reimagined, reinvented, and recently received my MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College.

Human. I grew up in small towns in the Mississippi River Valley of Southwestern Wisconsin, fortunate to come from a diverse family, which included a dearly loved uncle with Down’s syndrome and Black civil rights leader Ray Robinson, who was killed when I was a small child. His three children, my Detroit cousins, were formative in my early understanding of what it means to be family. Ray, when presented with forms to fill out for my cousins’ birth certificates, filled out the “race” entry with one word: HUMAN. I will never see it any other way. I honor that here.

I began this blog in 2016 under the tagline “cracking the past’s glass,” and, over the years, I have written many pieces jabbing at glass ceilings, not only of a culture of toxic masculinity but also at the trappings of bigotry and greed that build walls when we should be building bridges. The poor still go hungry. The homeless abound. We derail programs instead of fixing them–National Health Care, anyone? More than 40% of cancer patients in the United States file for bankruptcy within two years of diagnosis. The global pandemic illustrated the imbalances in our systems. These themes are often threaded through my fiction and poetry, forming a colorful and, hopefully, poignant tapestry of words.

I won’t stop jabbing. I am motivated. I move my pen daily. Ink flows.

I invite you to pull up a chair and stay.

Just watch where you step.

I break things.

to contact me