bio
My short fiction collection, Piranhas & Quicksand & Love, was published by Press 53 in 2016. My
fiction
and essays have appeared in The Georgia
Review, Antioch Review, Glimmer Train, Rosebud, and other journals, and my travel writing has been
featured in anthologies including The Best American
Travel Writing series, as well as in The
Washington Post, Miami Herald, Nature Conservancy Magazine, Washingtonian,
Saturday Evening Post, railstotrails.org,
LetsCarryOn.com, baltimore.org and many other publications and websites. In the last few years, I have moved away from short stories and travel writing to work on a novel, which has been tremendous, absorbing fun. I am now done with that, and am trying to sell it, and have started a new one... (Jeanette Winterson: "Be ambitious for the work, and not for the reward.")
In 2011 I won the Travel Classics International travel writing contest, and I have also received a Book Passage Travel Essay Contest prize, a Maryland State Arts Council grant, a Glimmer Train Very Short Fiction Prize, and a Silver Rose Award from the ART Foundation, among other awards. Recently, the Short Story Project purchased translation and audio rights to some of my work, and added two of my stories to their online collection.
I have an MFA in fiction from George Mason University, and teach creative writing at University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC).
Since 2016, I've been involved with the Dylan Thomas International Summer School creative writing program, helping UMBC students discover the beautiful country of Wales, and discover new possibilities for their writing. This unique 12-day program is hosted by the University of Wales Trinity St David in the small town of Lampeter, amid sheep-dotted hills between the mountains and the sea.
The Radio Reading Network, which serves blind and low-vision listeners in the mid-Atlantic region, streams my hour-long program "Prose and Poetry" at their website, radioreadingnetwork.org. Reading, it turns out, can be as powerful, cathartic, and creative an act as writing.
