A thirst for lakes and a longing for the contours of my childhood brought me back to Michigan in 1996. I spent the first eight years of my life in Walkerville, Michigan, where my parents owned a meat market in town and a summer store on nearby School Section Lake. My two younger sisters and I spent our summers at the lake, working in the store when we were old enough to make change or fill up the pop cooler. We caught minnows and frogs, fished for bluegills with bamboo poles, and rowed a green wooden boat out into the lake. We learned to swim right after we learned to walk.
I left Michigan for college in Illinois, then went even further away—to teach with the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone, West Africa. When I returned to the States, I landed in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and it became my adopted home for 26 years.
After receiving my MFA in Writing degree from Vermont College (during the infamous Blizzard of ’96), I made it back to
Pennsylvania, packed my wagon, including the dog and cat, and headed for Michigan.
I worked my way north and settled in the Petoskey/Harbor Springs area, where I met my second husband and taught for ten years as an adjunct instructor
at North Central Michigan College in Petoskey.
We now live on 23 acres of red pine, beech and maple close to Lake Michigan (aka the Big Lake). We named our home “Second Growth.”
For thirty years, writing has been my way of interpreting the world and my place in it. I’ve tried all the genres: essays (including a newspaper column), poems, short stories, a novel, a non-fiction book. You can read some of them here.
