Hello! I live in Kentucky with my husband, two dogs, and two cats. (Happily, the animals outnumber the people!) My son studies Political Economies in California. Most days I walk, practice yoga, and watch for turtle families in a nearby pond. I adore travel. Ireland has particularly caught my heart, and I have been there almost yearly, sometimes bringing students along. I recently fell in love with Romania after acting as a Fulbright Scholar in Cluj-Napoca at Universitatea Babeș-Bolyai spring semester 2020.
Professionally, I am an Associate Professor of English at Northern Kentucky University where I direct the Graduate Program in English and act as the Coordinator of Creative Writing. Teaching is my life's work, and I feel privileged to be with my students--a generation that is changing the political landscape right before my eyes all while being brave enough to be vulnerable and take risks on the page. I won the college-wide award of Teacher of the Year when I taught at Kentucky Wesleyan College. At my current institution, I have won the English Professor of the Year Award as well as two university-wide awards: Outstanding Junior Faculty Member and Excellence in Graduate Research Mentoring.
I have three full-length collections of poetry, a chapbook, and another full-length collection coming out through Salmon Poetry. (The virus has delayed publication.) My poems have appeared in many literary magazines, including Rattle, Barrelhouse, Versal, Colorado Review, Laurel Review, MidAmerican Review, Cincinnati Review, Copper Nickel, and Cortland Review, and my work has been featured in the following anthologies: The Giant Book of Poetry, Even the Daybreak: 35 Years of Salmon Poetry, and New Writing: An Anthology. I am a proud recipient of five grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women and of three residencies in Ireland through Salmon Literary Centre and the Burren Art College. Recently, I was invited to act as the nonfiction editor for a new journal, Golden Streetcar. Current projects include polishing up a chapbook (slated to be published by Angels Flight Books) as well as crafting a memoir about growing up in the dog show circuit. And I am honored to act as an artistic consultant for the Mourning the Creation of Racial Categories project as well as an author in the essay collection How to Respond in a Pandemic: 25 Ideas from 25 Disciplines of Study.
Click Here for Brief Article about Fulbright
(Image of trees comes from the painting by Kevin Muente titled Dry Creek Bed--used by permission of the artist for the cover of Bird Blind.)
Professionally, I am an Associate Professor of English at Northern Kentucky University where I direct the Graduate Program in English and act as the Coordinator of Creative Writing. Teaching is my life's work, and I feel privileged to be with my students--a generation that is changing the political landscape right before my eyes all while being brave enough to be vulnerable and take risks on the page. I won the college-wide award of Teacher of the Year when I taught at Kentucky Wesleyan College. At my current institution, I have won the English Professor of the Year Award as well as two university-wide awards: Outstanding Junior Faculty Member and Excellence in Graduate Research Mentoring.
I have three full-length collections of poetry, a chapbook, and another full-length collection coming out through Salmon Poetry. (The virus has delayed publication.) My poems have appeared in many literary magazines, including Rattle, Barrelhouse, Versal, Colorado Review, Laurel Review, MidAmerican Review, Cincinnati Review, Copper Nickel, and Cortland Review, and my work has been featured in the following anthologies: The Giant Book of Poetry, Even the Daybreak: 35 Years of Salmon Poetry, and New Writing: An Anthology. I am a proud recipient of five grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women and of three residencies in Ireland through Salmon Literary Centre and the Burren Art College. Recently, I was invited to act as the nonfiction editor for a new journal, Golden Streetcar. Current projects include polishing up a chapbook (slated to be published by Angels Flight Books) as well as crafting a memoir about growing up in the dog show circuit. And I am honored to act as an artistic consultant for the Mourning the Creation of Racial Categories project as well as an author in the essay collection How to Respond in a Pandemic: 25 Ideas from 25 Disciplines of Study.
Click Here for Brief Article about Fulbright
(Image of trees comes from the painting by Kevin Muente titled Dry Creek Bed--used by permission of the artist for the cover of Bird Blind.)