I started writing poetry in college before I realized traumatic memories lay at the core of my emotions.

Before that, I’d become an expert in survival and denial, excelling in school and sports as a way to forget my childhood pain.

I didn’t know then than trauma grows roots in the nervous system and literally changes the body’s cellular structure.  

In graduate school, with each creative writing assignment, writing gave me the power to transform grief into art. I wrote scenes from memory, trying to recapture what it was like living with a mentally ill parent. During the day, I taught high schoolers about literature; in the evening, I studied and wrote, eventually amassing more than 200,000 words about my journey from homelessness and foster care to safety and love. 

Those words, critiqued, edited, and rewritten countless times over the course of almost two decades, became the memoir I am proud to share with the world. 

Writing gave me a path to myself before I even knew how lost I was.

I continue to write about love, loss, and the consequences of trauma, with an emphasis on healing and hope. These elements show up again and again in my work because I am fascinated by how the past contributes to the present and how understanding the past might lead to an ever-brightening future.

As an editor, I love helping writers achieve their dreams of putting amazing stories into readers’ hands.

I hope writing your story will lead you home too.