I am long retired from a career in writing and editing. I spend my days writing poetry, taking pictures, hiking and talking to my two cats, both of whom talk back. I grew up in Huntington, New York and went to college at Binghamton University, where I studied British, American and Canadian literature and South American magical realism and earned a master’s degree in creative writing. In 2021 I moved from Lenexa, KS to Candia, NH to live closer to my family and the ocean. I now live in Exeter, NH where I spend a lot of time walking in sand and snow.
My work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Midwest Quarterly, The Moon City Review, I-70 Review, Bellevue Poetry Review, Stone Canoe, The Comstock Review and many other print and online journals and anthologies.
I am the author of a full-length poetry collection, After All (FutureCycle Press, 2018), which was a a runner-up for the 2018 Hefner-Heitz Kansas Book Award and first runner-up for the 2019 Thorpe-Menn award for literary excellence. My chapbook, Where the World Begins, was published in 2015. It is available from Finishing Line Press.
Since 2024, I have been a member of the Board of the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. I am the membership chairperson and an associate editor of Touchstone, our journal of poetry and art.
For fun, I travel, often to photography workshops. I am slowly learning to cross-country ski. I volunteer for the New Hampshire SPCA and write emails to politicians begging them to stand up and defend our beleaguered democracy.
My work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Midwest Quarterly, The Moon City Review, I-70 Review, Bellevue Poetry Review, Stone Canoe, The Comstock Review and many other print and online journals and anthologies.
I am the author of a full-length poetry collection, After All (FutureCycle Press, 2018), which was a a runner-up for the 2018 Hefner-Heitz Kansas Book Award and first runner-up for the 2019 Thorpe-Menn award for literary excellence. My chapbook, Where the World Begins, was published in 2015. It is available from Finishing Line Press.
Since 2024, I have been a member of the Board of the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. I am the membership chairperson and an associate editor of Touchstone, our journal of poetry and art.
For fun, I travel, often to photography workshops. I am slowly learning to cross-country ski. I volunteer for the New Hampshire SPCA and write emails to politicians begging them to stand up and defend our beleaguered democracy.
Partial List of Publications and Awards
Books
2018, After All, FutureCycle Press; First runner up, 2019 Thorpe Menn Award
Honorable mention, 2018 Hefner Heitz Kansas Book Award
2015, Where the World Begins, (chapbook) Finishing Line Press
Photos
Slippery Elm, 2025, cover photo
Anthologies
Casting Lines, an anthology of fishing poems by female poets. Merna Dyer Skinner, editor, forthcoming in 2027 from Trail to Table Books (Wandering Aengus Press)
Purrfect Poems, fundraiser for Cat's Protection, the UKs largest feline welfare charity, (Dream Well Writing, Ltd, 2020)
Kansas Time+Place: An Anthology of Heartland Poetry (Balkan Press, 2017)
Gimme Your Lunch Money: Heartland Poets Speak Out against Bullies (Paladin Contemporaries, 2016)
New Poetry from the Midwest (New American Press, 2014)
Best of the Net (Sundress Publications, 2008)
Poems, circa 1995-present
10x3, “Chocolate Ice Cream Cone”
American Journal of Poetry, “A Reckoning,” “A Kansas Story,” “Family Photograph,” “In Vino Veritas”
Apple Valley Review, “Come Inside,” “Company at Christmas,” “Thanksgiving,” “The Story”
Atlanta Review, “Anne Frank’s Cat”
Atlas & Alice, "The Garden"
The Avenue, "Viewing the Books"
Bellevue Literary Review, “Stage Four, Summer,” “Advent”
Blood Lotus Review, “Hunger”
Blood Orange Review, “Before,” “Times Square”
Breakwater Review, “Waking in My Father’s Bed”
Bryant Literary Review, “Gunn Hill”
Chiron Review, "To My Cat," "Out of water, fish" (forthcoming 2027)
Common Ground, "Closing Up the Beach House at the End of Summer"
Comstock Review, “The Women in the Kitchen,” “Drop a Knife, Somebody’s Coming,” “Maybe This World,” “Travel,” “A Hole in the Roof,” “The Bakers,” “Wind and Words”
DMQ Review, "Still Life with Ex-Wife"
Escape into Life, “Adam and Eve,” “How It Rained in Barcelona,” “Waikiki,” “Night Knitting,” “Lady of the House,” “Mother Song,” “The Death of Romance,” “The Long Night Makes of Him a Coyote”
Flapper Press, "Walking with a Ghost in the Deerfield Forest" (Pushcart Nominee)
Freshwater, “If She Could Be Found,” “The Cherry Festival”
Glassworks, "Snapshot," "Girls Who Fish"
Green Hills Literary Lantern, “A Birthday”
Gyroscope, "Practicing Chaos"
Heartwood, "The Day after the Funeral"
I-70 Review, “How to Shoot a Panorama,” “A Few Years Before the Divorce,” “Driving Home from St. Louis After a Funeral,” “What Happened in Highland,” “The Middle”
Inkwell, “Phone Call from a Movie Set Somewhere in Kansas,” “Understanding”
LakeShore Review, "Hotel"
Lucid Stone, “Light,” “Very Good at Sleeping”
Midwest Quarterly, “Where They Slept”
Moon City Review, “Polly’s Mother Sang Opera,” “Overdue”
Naugatuck River Review, “Married,” “Another Story," "What Burned"
Off the Coast, “Squirrel Soup” (Pushcart Nominee)
Pedestal Magazine, “Shawnee Pasture”
Poem, “Making, Keeping,” “Iowa Bride”
poemeleon, “Kiss”
Poetry Bay, “Strange Women”
Poetry South, "Foretold," 2025 Pushcart Nominee
Poet's Touchstone, "World Made of Miracles, "Evening," "The Glove of Fire"
Potomac Review, "We Wish No Less for You"
Potpourri, “Cardinal Song”
qarrtsiluni: “In the Middle of the Night”
Red Flag, "When the 7-Eleven Opened"
Red River Review, “Mary Gets Going”
Red Rock, "On Waking from Surgery"
RE:AL, “Boys Who Cut the Legs Off Box Turtles,”(Pushcart Nominee) “What Is Love?”
River and South, "Spring, Senior Year"
Schuylkill Valley Journal, “I Speak at My Mother’s Funeral”
Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine, “How do you lose,” “First Communion Day,” “Dreams of Dead Women”
South 85, “Homecoming”
Spoon River Poetry Review, “Soup,” “Inside the Tidy House of Love”
Stone Canoe, “To Anne Sexton”
Stonecoast Review, “What to Feed a Ghost”
Typehouse, “Cleaning Up After the Last Supper”
Wild Goose, “His Truck”
Wildscape, "My Mother, Peeling Carrots
Short Fiction
Big Toe Review, “Fog,” “Trust”
The Indiana Review, “Bonding”
MSS, “The Ways of Man
Libretto, We, the Unknown, oratorio premiered by the Heartland Men’s Chorus, Kansas City, MO (co-author)
Prizes
2019, first prize, Breaking Free Writing Contest, Johnson County (KS) Library, for “Congolese Refugee Family Watches Fireworks for the First Time”
2013, first prize, Comstock Review Muriel Craft Bailey competition, for “Drop A Knife, Somebody’s Coming”
2012, runner-up Poets and Writers’ Maureen Egan Writers Exchange Award.
2009, Freshwater editors' prize, for “If She Could Be Found”
Books
2018, After All, FutureCycle Press; First runner up, 2019 Thorpe Menn Award
Honorable mention, 2018 Hefner Heitz Kansas Book Award
2015, Where the World Begins, (chapbook) Finishing Line Press
Photos
Slippery Elm, 2025, cover photo
Anthologies
Casting Lines, an anthology of fishing poems by female poets. Merna Dyer Skinner, editor, forthcoming in 2027 from Trail to Table Books (Wandering Aengus Press)
Purrfect Poems, fundraiser for Cat's Protection, the UKs largest feline welfare charity, (Dream Well Writing, Ltd, 2020)
Kansas Time+Place: An Anthology of Heartland Poetry (Balkan Press, 2017)
Gimme Your Lunch Money: Heartland Poets Speak Out against Bullies (Paladin Contemporaries, 2016)
New Poetry from the Midwest (New American Press, 2014)
Best of the Net (Sundress Publications, 2008)
Poems, circa 1995-present
10x3, “Chocolate Ice Cream Cone”
American Journal of Poetry, “A Reckoning,” “A Kansas Story,” “Family Photograph,” “In Vino Veritas”
Apple Valley Review, “Come Inside,” “Company at Christmas,” “Thanksgiving,” “The Story”
Atlanta Review, “Anne Frank’s Cat”
Atlas & Alice, "The Garden"
The Avenue, "Viewing the Books"
Bellevue Literary Review, “Stage Four, Summer,” “Advent”
Blood Lotus Review, “Hunger”
Blood Orange Review, “Before,” “Times Square”
Breakwater Review, “Waking in My Father’s Bed”
Bryant Literary Review, “Gunn Hill”
Chiron Review, "To My Cat," "Out of water, fish" (forthcoming 2027)
Common Ground, "Closing Up the Beach House at the End of Summer"
Comstock Review, “The Women in the Kitchen,” “Drop a Knife, Somebody’s Coming,” “Maybe This World,” “Travel,” “A Hole in the Roof,” “The Bakers,” “Wind and Words”
DMQ Review, "Still Life with Ex-Wife"
Escape into Life, “Adam and Eve,” “How It Rained in Barcelona,” “Waikiki,” “Night Knitting,” “Lady of the House,” “Mother Song,” “The Death of Romance,” “The Long Night Makes of Him a Coyote”
Flapper Press, "Walking with a Ghost in the Deerfield Forest" (Pushcart Nominee)
Freshwater, “If She Could Be Found,” “The Cherry Festival”
Glassworks, "Snapshot," "Girls Who Fish"
Green Hills Literary Lantern, “A Birthday”
Gyroscope, "Practicing Chaos"
Heartwood, "The Day after the Funeral"
I-70 Review, “How to Shoot a Panorama,” “A Few Years Before the Divorce,” “Driving Home from St. Louis After a Funeral,” “What Happened in Highland,” “The Middle”
Inkwell, “Phone Call from a Movie Set Somewhere in Kansas,” “Understanding”
LakeShore Review, "Hotel"
Lucid Stone, “Light,” “Very Good at Sleeping”
Midwest Quarterly, “Where They Slept”
Moon City Review, “Polly’s Mother Sang Opera,” “Overdue”
Naugatuck River Review, “Married,” “Another Story," "What Burned"
Off the Coast, “Squirrel Soup” (Pushcart Nominee)
Pedestal Magazine, “Shawnee Pasture”
Poem, “Making, Keeping,” “Iowa Bride”
poemeleon, “Kiss”
Poetry Bay, “Strange Women”
Poetry South, "Foretold," 2025 Pushcart Nominee
Poet's Touchstone, "World Made of Miracles, "Evening," "The Glove of Fire"
Potomac Review, "We Wish No Less for You"
Potpourri, “Cardinal Song”
qarrtsiluni: “In the Middle of the Night”
Red Flag, "When the 7-Eleven Opened"
Red River Review, “Mary Gets Going”
Red Rock, "On Waking from Surgery"
RE:AL, “Boys Who Cut the Legs Off Box Turtles,”(Pushcart Nominee) “What Is Love?”
River and South, "Spring, Senior Year"
Schuylkill Valley Journal, “I Speak at My Mother’s Funeral”
Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine, “How do you lose,” “First Communion Day,” “Dreams of Dead Women”
South 85, “Homecoming”
Spoon River Poetry Review, “Soup,” “Inside the Tidy House of Love”
Stone Canoe, “To Anne Sexton”
Stonecoast Review, “What to Feed a Ghost”
Typehouse, “Cleaning Up After the Last Supper”
Wild Goose, “His Truck”
Wildscape, "My Mother, Peeling Carrots
Short Fiction
Big Toe Review, “Fog,” “Trust”
The Indiana Review, “Bonding”
MSS, “The Ways of Man
Libretto, We, the Unknown, oratorio premiered by the Heartland Men’s Chorus, Kansas City, MO (co-author)
Prizes
2019, first prize, Breaking Free Writing Contest, Johnson County (KS) Library, for “Congolese Refugee Family Watches Fireworks for the First Time”
2013, first prize, Comstock Review Muriel Craft Bailey competition, for “Drop A Knife, Somebody’s Coming”
2012, runner-up Poets and Writers’ Maureen Egan Writers Exchange Award.
2009, Freshwater editors' prize, for “If She Could Be Found”
