The odds are pretty good that I'm the only faculty member on campus who was born and raised in the glorious town of Brazil, Indiana. Are you envious? Of course you are.

How did I end up teaching at U of I? After undergrad, I swore I was done with school forever. No way would I ever go back. I did all kinds of stuff. Worked in a record store, sold radio advertising, edited an arts magazine in Indianapolis, interviewed rock bands, dabbled in public relations, lived in France, owned a bookstore. Oh, and eventually went crawling back to school. I love writing. I love teaching writing and reading writing and talking about writing and interacting with students about their writing. I especially relish it when a student is brilliant on the page, but they aren't aware of it and I get to point out to them exactly why. 

Teaching Creative Writing is a stupendous career (even if the grading marathons can be blisteringly exhausting) and my favorite thing is when student writers are extremely engaged in the workshops. It's just cool. In 2016, I created a class called Trauma Writing. So many of my students wrote about their personal trauma in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction classes, that I thought, "Hmmm. Wonder if people would sign up for a class just about trauma." They did. It's intense for the students and for me. But good-intense. 

When I started teaching at UIUC in 1998, I was hugely discombobulated from some jarring life circumstances, and in our English Department I became a thriving person again. I figured out how fortunate I was to have a bunch of noxious junk in my rearview mirror. And then I became good friends with a co-worker who had a blog. Remember blogs? In the comments section there I met a guy from L.A. that I'd be marrying a couple years down the road. Life is so freaking twisty. So is writing, of course, and I like to help each of my students find their genuine voice and dig into it. 

My biggest inspiration, my mom, lived to be 97 and her particularly colorful way of describing things fuels me in the classroom to this day. An example: "Your sister was driving me to church on Wednesday night and a cop car flew around us like a blue-assed fly."