About Me

Originally from Southern California, I earned a B.A. in Creative Writing from the University of California, Riverside, in 2001. I graduated with an M.F.A. in Poetry from the University of Idaho, Moscow, in 2004. I now live in New Orleans, LA, where I am an Associate Professor of English at Delgado Community College. In 2022, I stepped down after serving five years as the Department Chair of American Sign Language Studies, ESL & Foreign Language. I decided that I needed time time to travel and to concentrate on writing. I am fortunate to have several talented writers for colleagues, and so we meet regularly to “workshop” new poems and talk about poetry. It’s a pleasure to host salons for all of my writer friends to read and discuss new work or inspirations from their current reading lists.

As a poet and professor, I am interested in the role that language plays in mapping place and time, in designing culture and identity. I am interested in how the body and mind make meaning, and how, then, we manifest that meaning not only as utterance but also as image and architecture that people cross borders to experience. For me, language is the first tool of design, and I am drawn to the nebulous space beneath it from which infinite possibilities can emerge.