Writer
My creative nonfiction writing blends heart with humor. Personal essay and short memoir are my favored forms. Common themes in my writing include:

• Teaching, and students past and present
• Dating, relationships, and love after forty
• Family, Alzheimer's, and loss
• Travel

I was inspired to begin taking writing classes in 2010, when I met artist Louise Minks at her studio near Massachusetts' Montague Book Mill. Since then, one of my essays has been named Notable in the Best American Essays of 2016. My writing has also won awards in the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition, a contest in which I now judge the Humor category. A piece I wrote during pandemic distance teaching was awarded runner-up for Teachers and Writers Magazine's Bechtel Prize. I've also won second place in a Memoirs Ink contest. Though it took me from age six until age fifty-one to surrender to my life-long love of writing,  I derive tremendous joy from my literary endeavors. 

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Teacher
I taught for thirty-two years in the East Bay of San Francisco's Bay Area, and feel fortunate to have had a job in which I laughed and was challenged every day. I mostly taught third and fourth grades, and my students graciously provided me with plenty of writing material. In the Title I public school where I taught, English is a second language for more than half of the children. I'm passionate about public education and advocating for students, and am proud to have been active in the leadership of my teachers' union.

There is little that I love more than reading the writing of 8- and 9-year-old students. I continue to be amazed by how much I've learned about the craft of writing simply by teaching young writers. 

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