Who I Am & Why I Write

I'm the kind of person who reads with a pencil in hand.

Before I became a writer, I was a reader. Before I became a professor, I was the student scribbling questions in the margins of books. Long before The Margins became the name of this website, it was simply the way I read.

Writing gives me a chance to ask my favorite question: Why? Feminism gave me a language for this curiosity—and, more importantly, a framework for asking better questions. This cycle is where my writing returns again and again.

When I'm not in the classroom or working on a poem, you'll probably find me reading contemporary poetry, filling another notebook with ideas, walking my two dogs, or convincing myself that buying one more book is perfectly reasonable.

Teaching

Teaching has never felt separate from my writing. Both begin with the same belief: learning starts with curiosity.

For more than a decade, I've taught composition and literature in higher education. Every semester reminds me that teaching
isn't about having all the answers—it's about creating a space where questions are welcomed, ideas are challenged, and students
discover that writing is one of the ways we learn to think.

I want my classroom to be a place where students feel heard, where curiosity is valued over certainty, and where revision is
understood not as failure but as growth. Those beliefs shape my teaching just as deeply as it shapes everything I write.