A Bio: Big Picture, Long View
My urban and rural childhood, along with my teaching and family life, forms the inspiration for my work. As a grade-school kid, I attended a diverse magnet school in downtown Louisville, Kentucky. But as a young teen, I got quite a culture shock when my family moved to a rural part of the state. Then, I started to understand how my grandfather's origins in the outskirts of Appalachia shaped my family. I’ve parked my writing chair at the intersection of the old-school America--you know, the one your parents talk about--and the multicultural America that’s been on the rise over the last few decades.
I’m not a member of Gen Z, but I work with people from your generation every day, and I feel for you all in the complicated world you must navigate. Some things about teen life haven’t changed, but technology has set up new hurdles to clear. That’s why technology is a character in my work--and so is cultural identity. In graduate school at Miami University of Ohio, I explored the idea of cultural hybridity. We’re all hybrids, combinations of cultural forces that work with and against each other to affect how we see the world.
After studying music education in college, I did what generations of Kentuckians have done before me--drove over the Ohio River to the north, looking for work. I’ve since acquired a master’s degree, a boisterous blended family, and a home in Lebanon, a sleepy-sweet town midway between Dayton and Cincinnati.
Stories consist not only of what the writer puts on the page, but of the meaning that YOU, the reader, bring to them. So my hope is that you see a part of yourself in my stories. Let’s connect, and I may just learn something from you.