MFA Mills College, 1992; BA, California State Unversity Fresno Studied with Peter Everwine, David Wagoner, Marcia Falk, Al Young, Chana Bloch, Diana O'Hehir, Sheila Ballantyne, the great and incredible Marilyn Chandler, Teresa Bacon, and others. Over 40 years working in the book and publications field, as a bookseller, managing editor, production person, and editor. Starting as a bookseller and typesetter, I helped produce numerous poetry, fiction, and nonfiction publications, including journals like "Hambone," "The Black Scholar," "Plexus" (a women's newspaper), "News from Native California," "El Mundo Indiguena" and publications by Heyday Books in Berkeley. Have helped a number of writers, poets self-publish their work. Worked as managing editor of a mid-size publishing company, and ran my own publishing company, Sugartown, which produced 25 books in 8 years.  Have taught in community and state college systems, adult schools and community centers; currently teach private poetry workshops. Among the subjects taught: Poetry Soul-Diving, Poetry and Music, Poetry and the Visual Arts, Forms, Practical Poetry, etc. Influences: too many poets to mention but the first ones were T.S. Eliot, Walt Whitman and the Feminist poets of the 1960s-1980s. Favorite prose (non-fiction) writers include: Virginia Woolf, John McPhee, Robert Kaplan, Annie Dilliard, and Marilyn Robinson.    

For over 40 years, I have actively built poetry community in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area, through running readings, publishing the Bay Area Poetry Seasonal Review, 25 books as Sugartown Publishing, but also through my work ordering and maintaining lit zines at Cody's Books, 4th Street in Berkeley (how sweet while it lasted).
Edited and helped produce numerous print and online publications.
Publication of "Ancestor Worship" a poetry chapbook and "Workers' Compensation: Poems of Labor & the Working Life."
Miscellaneous single poems published in lit journals. Received $500 award for historical paper at Mills College on the subject of textile workers' literary achievements.
Publication of students' work in Fresh Ink anthologies.