Bio

Why I'm here
The first time I  moved to Alaska, I hated it. I didn't have the right clothes. It was cold and rainy, even in the summer. The hiking trails were littered with bear scat. I lasted three months before fleeing back to Arizona.

The second time, I lasted three years before fleeing back to Arizona.

The third time, I fell in love. That was twenty-three years ago and I still don't have the right clothes. It's still cold and rainy, even in the summer. And the hiking trails are still littered with bear scat. Yet I wouldn't be the person, or writer, I am if I lived in a less obstinate and beautiful place.

Writing
I spent nine years working for Anchorage Daily News as both feature writer and columnist, and four years as editor of the Seward Phoenix Log.

I've been blessed with writing residencies at Hedgebrook (twice), Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts and Hidden River Arts.

My awards include the Memoir (and) Grand Prize Winner (nonfiction); Sports Literate Essay Award;
Brenda Ueland Prose Prize Winner, Drexel Magazine Creative Nonfiction Award; Once Written Grand Prize in fiction; Pushcart Prize nominee in fiction; A Room of Her Own second-place creative nonfiction award; Writer's Bridge Nonfiction Contest second-place; ; Faulkner Wisdom Creative Writing Contest finalist; Rasmuson Foundation Individual Artist Award Fellowship, 2012 and 2007;  
and Alaska Art Council’s Connie Boochever Fellowship.

Publications:

Water-stone Review; New York Times Magazine, Gin Bender Poetry Review, Slow Trains Literary Journal, Wicked Alice, Rainbow Curve, Drexel Journal, Gloom Cupboard, Literary Mama, Moondance, Inklings, Ice Floe, Under the Sun, Ghoti, Women of the Web Anthology, Stirring: A Literary Collection; Wheelwatcher Companion II, Poems Niederngasse, Main Channel Voices, PMS:poemmemoirstory, iddie, Sho,Ophelia’s Muse, Clean Sheets, Conspire, Sunspinner, Fishnet, Nerve Cowboy, Retrozine, First Alaskans Magazine, We Alaskans Magazine, Explorations, Horse Thief’s Journal, Scarlet Letters, Mind Caviar, Inside Passages, International Journal of Erotica, Girlphoria, Cascadia Review, Working Hard: An Italian Anthology, 49 Writers, Memoir (and), Little White Poetry Journal, Sugar Mule and 42opus, Ghoti, Breadscabs, Miller’s Pond, with upcoming work in Sport Literate, Third Wednesday and Foliate Oak Review.

I've also had two short plays produced at Cyrano’s Off-Center Playhouse and a one-act play read at the Last Frontier Theatre Conference.