PUBLICATIONS
My essay “Belonging” appears in Western Confluence’s “People on Public Lands” issue (Fall 2018, Issue 9). I loved working with the editorial staff — they made my writing clearer and more concise while allowing to maintain my artistic vision.
My essay “Atlantic City: Gateway to a Soul” appears in the anthology Atlantic City: Voices from a Powerful Place (2017). Thank you to the Atlantic City, Wyoming Historical Society for all their work putting this together!
Souvenir Lit Journal published my essay “On Ammo: A Short Meditation” in their Spring 2016 issue. You can read my piece and check out the rest of the great writing in the issue here. Thanks to Matt Z. for recommending I submit something to Souvenir Lit Journal and to the journal for picking up this essay!
Check out my “Place Where You Live” piece, “Red Desert, Wyoming” on Orion’s website and take a look at the other work published by this excellent magazine. My essay appeared in the September/October issue of the print edition.
I was also featured reading this piece on Public Radio International’s Living on Earth in November 2016. Living on Earth collaborates with Orion to bring selected “Place Where You Live” essays from Orion’s website to the air. Check out my reading, along with the rest of their excellent programming, by clicking here.
CURRENT PROJECTS
My current projects include a novel-in progress, nonfiction essays in various stages of gestation and realization, and the occasional poem dashed off as a gift to family or friends.
Land Until the Sky Comes Down: A Novel in Progress
Though I studied nonfiction in graduate school and am still dedicated to the craft of the essay, reading novels has always been my first love in literature. After graduate school, I began a draft of a novel about family and place. Born from the seed of a dream I had while travelling cross-country with my husband to visit his ailing mother, this story has grown from an image of a barn in flames to an extended narrative that follows three main characters on their journeys towards creating a place to call their own. What started as a diversion from my “real” work in nonfiction has evolved into my largest creative endeavor.
Essays and Nonfiction
I am revising essays from my graduate thesis, Wind, Sage, and Bone: Essays of a Wyoming Woman, and submitting them to literary journals. I enjoy switching from the writer-mind to the editor-mind as well as the opportunity to read great work as I research journals that might be a good fit for my own writing.
I have several new essays in progress as well and look forward to coaxing them into coherent, full-fledged existence.
BACKGROUND
In May 2012, I completed my MFA in Creative Writing (Nonfiction) at the University of Idaho, where I studied with Kim Barnes, Mary Blew, Brandon Schrand, and Robert Wrigley. While in graduate school, I served first as a reader and then as the nonfiction editor for the literary journal Fugue. The editorial experience exposed me to a multitude of essays by established and emerging writers and provided me with invaluable insight into the business-side of writing and publishing.
My husband and I returned to Wyoming after my graduation in order to live in the landscape that we love, surrounded by the family and friends we share it with. This landscape and these people inspire most of my writing. During my time away from Wyoming and since my return, I have spent a great deal of time contemplating how we develop connections to certain places and communities, and why.