Bio

Or so said my dad, frequently, after I was born on March 15.

He also took to calling me The Holy Terror. I wasn't an altogether impossible child, however. I took care of orphaned bunnies and birds, and kept myself "stinkin' clean" by taking Skunky Baths in which I whisked my legs and arms through the water pouring out of the faucet (took far too much time to fill the tub).

I also played the church organ for a few years (I stopped doing that right around the time a groom fainted at the altar. I had to keep playing the same song over and over as the bride wept...).

I was born in Wilmington, Delaware, moved to North Carolina a month later and lived in a dresser drawer for 6 months, where I developed a life-long fear of small, dark places, then moved to Kansas, where I developed a life-long fear of cyclones.

When I was 6 we moved to Columbus, Ohio where I almost drowned and developed a life-long tendency to break out into hives and faint when exposed to cold water. We moved immediately thereafter to Gahanna, Ohio where I grew up on two-and-a-half wild and wonderful acres along with my four sisters and one brother (don't feel too sorry for him, he was the oldest), five mystical weeping willow trees, one winding creek, two wildflower-filled meadows, and several dogs and cats and turtles, and developed no additional phobias.

In high school my world expanded to include the Council of South Garfield Square, a community center in a low-income community in downtown Columbus. I established a reading program for neighborhood kids (and got a bunch of high school students from little old Gahanna to travel downtown and help every week), and volunteered for the Head Start program. I also made some of my most precious friends, including Roosevelt Johnson, who always wanted to build a bridge, and Zozay Washington, who taught me how to really play heart and soul. I moved to an apartment above the Council after I graudated from high school, and learned how to make tuna noodle casserole for the whole block.

Then I headed to Somerville, Massachusetts to work as a typist (yes, as in typing on a typewriter - but it was electric) for a year before starting college at magical, life-altering Hampshire College in Amherst. (My Division III thesis, Poverty: A Women's Issue is part of the Schlesinger Library Collection. Thank you, Hampshire.)

After living on the west coast and up and down the east coast for a while (and trying to change the world with the National Organization for Women and Bella Abzug), I moved back to the good old midwest, where we do grow lots of corn but we don't actually write with corncob pens. I lived in Detroit for six years and Dallied in the Alley while the University of Michigan School of Public Health bravely granted the Holy Terror a graduate degree.

I have a job now working with some very dedicated people trying to improve the health care system in Michigan, and the rest of the time I do what moms do, and I read books, and I also try to have a garden without really doing any gardening. And I write every day. I have one delightful husband, Rodger, and three delightful children, Kammy, Isaac, and Eliza -- who have never been Holy Terrors, not once in their lives (no, no, not once) -- and one little pup, Loki. You can find me in Ferndale, Michigan, just north of 8 Mile, along with seven old oak trees and one lovely white pine.

The first story I wrote was called "Beginner in the Convent" (yes, I was in 3rd grade at St. Matthews Catholic school at the time), followed soon after by "Kara, A Deer", whom, I am happy to say, not only survived the attack by Jacques the poacher, but also led Jacques to the ranger and got him arrested. Through the long and winding road of life, I've been writing ever since.

If you, too, have been writing stories since you can remember (that means you, Emily!) then either be prepared or have no fear ~ some things never change!