It all started…
in high school. I rode a bright orange 10-speed Schwinn to school and parked it every day under the flagpole. A boy who (apparently) liked me started to leave me poems on the book rack of my bike. I appreciated his turn of phrase and wrote him poems back. We kept this up all semester until he finally asked me to the movies.
In college, I continued writing poems and worked on the student literary magazine. My parents were really hoping for an anesthesiologist. Instead, I majored in English. It was in an Introduction to Literary Study that I first read Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, two influential poets of the modern century, who also happened to be women, writing from a very feminist perspective. Their writing changed my relationship to poetry. In fact, blew off the mud flaps.
I earned an MFA in creative writing in London with Antioch University International, studying with published authors, poets and fringe theatre playwrights and mingling with other would-be authors, poets and fringe theatre playwrights.
I discovered Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets (WFOP) in the early 2010s after years immersed in kids and career. From the beginning, I was gobsmacked by the amazing talent and openness of the membership, which inspired me to write more, write better and write in community. I made new connections that have enriched my life. I was also proud to win WFOP’s emerging poet and chapbook prizes, and I’m grateful to the fellowship for reconnecting me with poetry and writing again—that fierce creativity Plath and Sexton made their own.
“Live or die, but don’t poison everything. ”