Bio
Writing has been a passion since I was a child. For almost fifty years, I've enjoyed researching the details of a story, making them fresh, shaping and introducing a story to readers who, I hope, will be as captivated as I am about the subject. My interests are broad and include Louisiana history and culture, natural history, the arts, foodways, and travel. My genres include narrative nonfiction (aka feature writing), essays, and books. I have also created public relations content for nonprofits.
A diversity of experiences has served me well: Public Relations VP for a regional retail chain; a semester teaching feature writing at LSU; a week, on two separate occasions, teaching feature writing in a program for young journalists in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia: teaching conversational English to teenagers in rural Poland; as the keynote speaker at the LSU Writing Across the Curriculum conference; as a panelist at the Louisiana Book Festival. I've canoed (very small) bits of the Mississippi River and ridden a towboat pushing forty barges along the Big Muddy; I've hiked in Alberta and Montana, biked in Spain and Eastern Europe, had two knees arthroscoped, and can tell tales to my grandsons about living long and seeing much of the world.
Earlier in my career, when my kids were young, I often wrote essays about life in a household bustling with family activity and the vagaries of raising children. More recently, as a reflection of where I am in life, I've helped friends craft obituaries for their loved ones--a rewarding, though challenging, use of my language skills.