A Tall Bio…

Hi! welcome to my website! This is the long bio, so buckle in lads (gender neutral). I am a writer and educator, with my work very much informed by my experience as a queer and multiply disabled person. I've experienced a lot of isolation at different times in my life and hope my writing can help other people feel less alone, in a culture that’s designed to make us feel that way.

The first thing I can remember writing is a booklet in first grade about plants, except I couldn't spell the word "plants", so it was called "pals". As plants are my friends indeed, perhaps this was more appropriate that I realized. Plants have the answers! My adult writing life took both a poetry and a nonfiction path. Although I had written the odd poem as a child and teen, and was constantly making up songs to entertain myself, it was Galway Kinnell (RIP) speaking at my college who inspired me to go back to my dorm, write a poem that night, and keep going. For many years I worked on a manuscript called "Oh Manchester" that focused on the spirits of places and how they have impacted me.

In college I studied theater, which culminated in me writing a semi-autographical play about an autistic woman -- in 2006, so representation was even worse than it is now. I will never forget being told by a man in workshop that my character, who was based on me, was not realistic because autistic people cannot appreciate poetry. Although my thesis advisors told me it was not necessary to produce a staged reading, I went ahead and did it anyway. I definitely felt like I “fell through the cracks” academically. Although it was painful, it became a helpful reference point years later, when I started learning the principles of Critical Pedagogy, as well as working with college students in various states of overwhelm.

Shortly after I graduated, I started one of the internet's first blogs about asexuality, Asexy Beast. It blended cultural critique, autobiography, and reports of my efforts to build community among local asexuals. (These ended up becoming the US's first series of regular meetups for asexual folks, as well as our first national appearance in a pride parade). Asexy Beast had a smallish but very engaged following from 2007-2013.

When I was living in San Francisco circa 2006 to 2008, I visited its zine fest, which inspired me to start creating zines of my own. These included the four volume series "Adventures in Unemployment", "Bucket List Creator", "Kalama and the Albatross of Kaua'i", and more. I went on to exhibit at zine fairs from Olympia Washington to Omaha Nebraska, and my zines are held in several library collections.

From 2013 to 2020, I continued to make zines that incorporated comics and essays, as well as wrote poetry. For most of this time I worked in social services. The job that had the most impact on me was serving as a Peer Wellness Specialist for elders with complex medical needs, which exposed me to the concerns of people near death. Although I had already been radicalized by existing as a disabled person in America, witnessing many different nursing home environments radicalized me all over again.

Fast forward to 2020, with the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, I took a Zoom class on somatic poetry practices that changed the way I thought about and the way I wanted to write poetry. It also made me realize that I wanted poetry to be at the center of my life, since it seemed like such a crucial tool for the collective slowing down and grieving that the pandemic demanded of us.

Fired up by this experience, in 2021, I was accepted to the poetry track of the Portfolio Program at Portland's Independent Publishing Resource Center, an intensive year-long workshop based program, with additional instruction in printmaking techniques. Although the Portfolio Program is billed as an MFA alternative, many people from my class went on to pursue MFAs, myself included. I began the creative writing MFA program at Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, where I will graduate in 2026.

I chose PNCA because it rejects strict divisions of genre, as well as incorporating art forms beyond writing, inviting us to integrate our written work into visual art and beyond. My thesis, The Nighthawk, is a book length work of creative nonfiction about Long COVID, disabled survival, and of course, birds. My thesis also includes a video “translation”, SARS-CoV-2 Live @ Lloyd Center.  I have taught zine making, playwriting, academic essays, and ekphrastic writing to teens and adults, and worked one-on-one with college students on a wide variety of writing projects in PNCA's Academic Support Center.

Although I was born in New York City,  and spent a lot of time in the Bay Area, I have lived in Portland, Oregon since 2015. When I'm not reading or writing I can usually be found fangirling over California Condors, looking for my new favorite song on Bandcamp, or hanging out with my muse, Chance the dog. I am of Italian/Ashkenazi Jewish descent and identify as a Jewish Buddhist in support of a free Palestine.

What's next for me? Aside from making this website, the goal of several years, I am working on pursuing publication for The Nighthawk, finding homes for some of my essays and poems, developing my teaching portfolio, and looking for work in low-residency MFA programs, like the one I attended. Knowing how many people have, and will be, cognitively impacted by Long COVID, it’s important for me to be an advocate for affected students and to work collectively to do creative work with the abilities we have.