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I was born in Buffalo, New York. I am a poet and veteran teaching artist, a former modern dancer & choreographer. My fascination with interdisciplinary studies and ventures, as well as collaborative work and teaching, is an outgrowth of my voracious appetite for all things art.
I recently earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Notre Dame where I was immersed in experimental and avant garde poetry and an interdisciplinary approach to the study of poetics. I was especially smitten with experimental writing by contemporary women poets. I am excited about the impact these studies have on my own writing. While at Notre Dame, my teaching was recognized with the Kaneb Center Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching.
Since moving to Kalamazoo nearly a decade ago, I have worked as a resident dance artist with Education for the Arts. My dance career includes a BFA in Dance from York University, Toronto. I am a Lincoln Center Institute trained teaching-artist and have enjoyed the rigorous work in several area elementary and middle schools. The relationships and collaborative learning that come out of these intense experiences make the difficult work satisfying. I am a zealous promoter of arts education for all.
I also spent six years teaching dance history, dance education and improvisation in the excellent dance department at Western Michigan University, where I was introduced to the world of undergraduate teaching and also launched my MFA studies.
My teaching philosophy grows out of my long experience with artistic training and the art making process, solitary and communal. For me, teaching and creative work together provide a loop of energy and curiosity. I consider my role as teacher to be one of guide, facilitator, model, and resource. What matters to me is assisting students in finding what matters to them as we explore ten weeks of creative writing assignments and readings together within a unique circle of learners.
My experience teaching undergraduates has been largely with non-majors. I am recently aware of how this has impacted my teaching and how my teaching is suited to this particular kind of student. I want to provide them with “ways in” to the process and product of poems and stories, of all kinds of texts. All the while, they teach me about beginning again, seeing again, really listening again, to their fresh perspectives, their suspicions, questions and insights in our work together.
I am an alum of the Chicago Writer’s Voice at the Duncan Y, on the Advisory Board of Rhino Magazine, and Vice President of the Friends of Poetry Board-- happy to live among the lively murals they have put all over our community. My poems have appeared in magazines including Folio, Rhino, Permafrost and Indiana Review. A collaborative poem with poet Paulette Beete is due out soon in an anthology by Soft Skull Press titled, Saints of Hysteria: A Half Century of Collaborative American Poetry.
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