ABOUT
I am a proud
Minnes-OH-tah native...
enjoying life as a recovering academic, writer, independent scholar, workshop leader and spiritual seeker in my adopted home in the Appalachian foothills.
I spend a lot of time daydreaming and implementing ways to empower people to heed their creative yearnings and soul whisperings. I enjoy traveling and hiking with my husband and cooking fish and veggie-forward meals. I love spending time with friends and family. I’ve discovered a love of photographing the quirky, the odd, and the beautiful.
And I read. A lot.
My childhood was filled with books and bedtime stories. If the house was quiet, my family knew I had my nose in a book, or that I was scribbling a story of my own.
Given my love of reading and writing, what else could I do but major in English…and then go on for my Masters…and then my Ph.D.? As I pursued my graduate education at Purdue University, I developed literary and archival research skills and many passions, including recovering understudied and unknown texts by those whom history and culture have marginalized or failed to hear, and of preserving the past through through story.
Most importantly, I discovered a passion for listening, teaching, mentoring, and cultivating communities for people to write and grow together.
I began and ended my academic career at Marietta College, where I learned with and from amazing colleagues and students. I taught classes on subjects including archival research and literary recovery, banned books, early American literature, Disability Theory, and first-year writing, with a focus on service and experiential learning. I also directed and taught in the First Year Seminar program. In 2019, I was awarded the McCoy Professorship for Excellence in Teaching.
In 2023, I received a summer research stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities for my digital book project, Beyond Seduction and Abortion: The Life and “Memoir” of Zulma Marache.
I was living the dream: I had stable employment, tenure, a retirement fund, and affirmation that my scholarship mattered.
Then…a lot happened.
Some would call it burnout. Others would call it a midlife crisis. They wouldn’t be wrong. But it was more…a midlife(ish) catharsis. I heard, from that place beyond words, that I would need to leave Higher Education behind. The message was so clear that it literally stopped me in my tracks as I explored Stratford-upon-Avon on a damp and drizzly June day.
You’ll need to leave…to create…not now, though. Not yet.
Okay...?
I resumed walking, and when the “now” came I kept moving, one step of faith, one opportunity, one idea at a time. As I've moved forward, I’ve made wonderful discoveries that answer the inevitable question: "what can you do with with an English Ph.D....besides teach?
My answer, it turns out, is exactly what I always told my students when they asked me about an English major: what can't you do?
I’ve been able to translate my professional skills and lived experiences as a spiritual seeker living with chronic illness to serve individuals and my community. I've written and published two books, offered classes and workshops, including a monthly creative writing workshop at the local senior center. I volunteer with GoPacks, an organization that fights food insecurity and empowers families. I am in my second year as a board member of the Friends of the Museums, which promotes and preserves the history of the Mid-Ohio Valley, Northwest Territory, and inland waterways.
I am a member of the Transformative Language Arts Network, Literary Cleveland, the Society for the Study of American Women Writers, and American Writing Professionals.