I’m a writer and poet living in Charlotte, North Carolina, where I grow sunflowers in cow manure and lead grief writing workshops.

 

My work has earned recognition, including The Poetry Society of South Carolina’s 2025 John Edward Johnson Poetry Prize and the North Carolina Writers' Network’s 2024 Randall Jarrell Poetry Competition. A Pushcart Prize nominee in both poetry and fiction, I’ve also been a finalist for the NC Poetry Society Poet Laureate Award and the Broad River Review Ron Rash Poetry Award. A Pushcart Prize nominee in both poetry and fiction, I’ve also been a finalist for the NC Poetry Society Poet Laureate Award, the Broad River Review Ron Rash Poetry Award and the NC Writers’ Network Doris Betts Fiction Prize.

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Rooted in Appalachian coal dust and Carolina red clay, I learned the power of place from my grandmother, a blind seamstress who collected buttons she couldn’t see, and from my mother, who baked legendary pies and secretly wrote poetry. My grandfather's tales of going over Niagara Falls in a barrel taught me to love the wild, while my father, an engineer who made blueprints of angel wings and looked for the Holy Grail, showed me something about the architecture of faith. These threads weave through my writing, reflecting a deep reverence for memory, myth, and place.

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I am dedicated to hospice work, reading poetry to the dying and leading grief writing workshops for the bereaved, for caregivers and for counselors. My writing appears in Fourth River, Kakalak, Main Street Rag, moonShine Review, Northern Appalachia Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Stonecoast Review, storySouth and elsewhere.

 

I find inspiration in the storm-scarred Carolina mountains and alligator-haunted lands near the Cooper River, where I talk to trees and listen for the voices of my beloved late cats, Alice B. Toklas and Thomas Merton.