I was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan and left for Reed College (which is as far from the Midwest as I could get) in Portland, Oregon. I was a glum but deeply curious kid which made for the perfect foundation for a life of poetry and wandering and investigating and recording and appreciating and storytelling. So naturally, after undergrad I lit out for the opposite coast — New York City. I worked for Artforum and Art in America back when magazines mattered while running around a pre internet and pre cell phone NYC, checking out art galleries, live music and falafel carts. I left to get my masters in poetry from the Writing Programs at The University of Houston and to eat tacos every day. And then, escaping the blast furnace of east Texas, I took my highly profitable M.F.A. to Los Angeles hoping to write for T.V. Instead, I stumbled into a job as a production assistant at Marketplace, public radio’s business program. And what luck! It turns out that the building blocks of great audio are the same as the building blocks of poetry — they’re both about the distillation of meaning, the importance of silence, the human voice in all of its musicality and the complexity of that human voice in context. I had found my medium! In the 30 years since, I’ve been a reporter, editor, and producer for NPR and NPR Music, and managed shows for North Carolina Public Radio, Minnesota Public Radio, and KQED.

I never stopped writing, I published a poetry collection called Gathering Sound, co-edited Searching for Mary Poppins, and contributed to several other anthologies. Oh, and yes, I’m a teacher too, I’ve taught writing and audio storytelling at universities including Duke, UNC Chapel Hill, and Wake Forest, and served as a cultural diplomat for the U.S. Department of State in eight countries.