2020 Petrichor Prize finalist
The first short story I remember writing, in second grade, was about a grocery store. I’m sure my mother thought it worthy of a Pulitzer. But fiction did not claim me for a very long time after that early instinctual attempt to explain the world to myself.
I turned instead to nonfiction, earning a living as a journalist, first in print (garnering numerous regional press awards), then as a freelancer for public radio news programs on NPR and elsewhere. I also spent several years as an executive speechwriter in Washington, D.C., and as a communications director and grants trainer for numerous governmental and nonprofit organizations.
In fiction, I write in multiple genres (dystopian, fantasy, romance, young adult) and forms (novels, short stories, plays, and poetry). I tend to research every piece quite deeply (even the romance!), bringing my journalist past into my fiction. I’m perennially preoccupied with the ways politics and culture influence behavior. Theater productions include the Dada-inspired Terminal Lucidity; Raw, produced as part of the 2015 Women’s Voices Festival; Exit Pluto; and Always Never Now. Selected short plays are published by Routledge and Leicester Bay Theatricals, and short fiction by Flying Ketchup Press and Fleas on the Dog. My paranormal romance, The Nighthawkers, will be published in 2022 by The Wild Rose Press. I am a 2014 recipient of a Rubys Artist Award from the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance.
When I’m not writing, I may be found dancing awkwardly (I don’t even let my husband watch) to jazz or cabaret in my apartment, hiking in the woods of Vermont or Virginia, or drinking wine and binge-watching a fantastic series that may or may not be set on planet Earth. And, oh, reading!
