I always loved to read. Everything: mystery novels, other worlds, hard-core science and journalism, collections of poetry, biographies and memoirs. But in 2014, my teenage son took his life and I turned to books in a new way, seeking what potato chips and M&Ms could not deliver. When night threw a veil of darkness over days that had lost any point, I sought solace from other travelers on the journey through grief, but didn’t find what I was seeking. I put my pen to paper (or my fingers to the keyboard) and began to write what I needed to read.

I studied to hone and develop the craft of writing. With every class, critique, and workshop, with every personal essay or hybrid work I put into the world, not only my writing improved, so did my relationship with truth and my understanding of life.

WHAT LASTS, a chapbook of essays and poems about loving and losing a son, is forthcoming from Wrong Publishing January 19, 2024.

I am working on my second project, a memoir about surviving cancer then surviving the treatments for cancer in capitalist America where every single thing, including whether we live or die, is about the almighty dollar.