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I was born in Minnesota and lived in North Dakota before moving to Paxton, Nebraska (population about 500), a place that has influenced much of my writing and research. I went to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln for my BA and then to Oregon State University for my MA. My thesis, "Paxton: A Cartography," was a collection of essays and the beginning of my thinking about issues of place and writing. I returned to UNL for my doctoral work in composition and rhetoric and creative writing, where I had the opportunity to be an editorial assistant for the literary journal Prairie Schooner. I am currently at work on a book manuscript, Landscapes of Literacy: Rural Women Writing Culture, an ethnographic study of older women in my hometown of Paxton and the literacies they use and create in their lives and community. Articles from this research have been published in Western American Literature, Great Plains Quarterly, and another is forthcoming in the anthology Multiple Literacies for the 21st Century. My fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in Sundog: The Southeast Review and Clackamas Literary Review. At TCU I teach courses in writing, rhetoric, and literacy, and I'm also Associate Editor for the literary journal descant, now in its fourth decade of publication. |
