Writing to pause; pausing to write. With a full-time job as an administrative assistant for a statewide nonprofit, I pause to write whenever I can, whether that's on my bike commute in the morning, just after I've shed the jacket and poured a cup o' joe, or well after the day is done, upstairs at my writing desk, while my husband quiets our two young dogs. (Or doesn't, as I often hear them bark and need to resist the impulse to intervene.) My mornings reading and writing before the house stirs a memory I'll return to in the future.

You can find my poems in 2019 issues of About Place Journal, Cloudbank, and Windfall: Poetry of Place. I've also had poems appear in basalt, Crab Creek Review, Elohi Gadugi Journal, Hipfish, Panoplyzine, What the River Brings: Oregon River Poems, and New Poets of the American West, and elsewhere. My first book of poems, The Company of Sharks, was published in 2013.

I moved to Eugene from Detroit, Michigan, in 1989. After working in several incredible independent bookstores and Wayne State University Press, I was for a time fortunate to work as Production Manager at Oregon's trade poetry publisher, Story Line Press before their move from Brownsville. I've helped organize readings for the Lane Literary Guild and Tsunami Books since 1996, and I currently co-host the Springfield Poetry Series with Carter McKenzie. I'm a member of the 1st & 3rd Thursdays critique group, and I'm profoundly grateful to all the poets in the region who inspire and co-create this vibrant literary landscape.