I grew up in Oklahoma where I fell in love with books like the following:

Whose Mouse Are You by Robert Kraus and Jose Aruego (wherein a young mouse rescues parents and siblings from cats, traps, and other impediments);

A Bargain for Frances by Russell Hoban and Lillian Hoban (wherein Frances finds herself betrayed by a friend and cleverly restores justice and the friendship);  

Dorrie and the Halloween Plot by Patricia Coombs (wherein Dorrie, a little witch whose socks never match, struggles to learn to curtsy but manages to save the day when she is kidnapped).

Other books that stand out include Ramona Quimby, Age 8 by Beverly Cleary, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor, Anastasia Krupnik by Lois Lowry, Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper, and A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L’Engle. At some point, I was forced to read an appalling number of books in which the dog dies, and I lost the next year or two reading only Sweet Valley High books and their ilk to recover.

I read A Ring of Endless Light by Madeleine L’Engle one summer on Chisik Island in Alaska, where, like Vicky Austin, I sometimes caught glimpses of dolphins (and humpbacks and belugas). That book set me on the path to be a marine biologist until I decided to become a writer instead. I did study biology as an undergraduate at Goshen College before earning an MFA in Creative Writing at Eastern Washington University.

Currently, I teach Creative Writing and Children’s and Adolescent Literature at Northwest University where I get to introduce students to some of my favorite books like All the World by Liz Garton Scanlon and Marla Frazee, Gaston by Kelly DiPucchio and Christian Robinson, Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai, and American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang.

Grants & Awards

Heliotrope Poetry Chapbook Award Winner
Seattle Artist Program for Literary Arts Grant from Seattle Arts Commission
Grant for Artist Project from Artist Trust
Floating Bridge Press Poetry Chapbook Award Finalist