I was born in Altoona, formerly one of the country’s great railroad towns, located in the Allegheny Mountains in western Pennsylvania. My teen years were spent in nearby Hollidaysburg, a tiny town surrounded by farmlands and forests, quarries and strip mines. After attending Smith College and Stanford Law School on scholarships, I practiced law in San Francisco for ten years.   I live now with my husband and three teenagers in Northern California. Before starting Warren Wilson’s MFA program in 2008, my work was in advocacy and as a grass roots political organizer for parents of children with Autism and other learning disorders.

My recent poetry is widely published in small print journals, earning two Pushcart nominations in 2008, and my books Dark Card and Mom’s Canoe won the 2007 and 2008 Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prizes. Two of my poems were nominated for Pushcarts in 2008, and two others won International Poetry Awards from Atlanta Review in 2007 and 2008. My recent poetry appears widely in journals including Fourteen Hills, Margie, North American Review, Spoon River Poetry Review and is forthcoming in Women's Review of Books and others.