My background is in fiction and memoir, although I also seem to have become a poet by default. I studied the history of writing workshops and conducted my first workshop as an undergraduate at Hampshire College, in Amherst, Massachusetts (1992). After I returned to the Bay Area, I graduated from the University of San Francisco (USF) with a MA in Writing (1998), where I wrote a fictionalized memoir for my major project (Certain Sacred Places).

While I was enrolled in the MA program at USF, I continued to study the Amherst Writers and Artists method, created by Pat Schneider with a peer in Oakland. Later, I completed the intensive training program in the AWA method and I now train others in this method.

(Click here if you're interested in coming to the next AWA training in California).

I have been leading my own San Francisco workshops since 1999.

I am a part-time instructor at USF--although I'm curerently on leave of absence--where I teach academic research writing. I have taught creative writing classes (short story, memoir and editorial) at the Academy of Art and Skyline College, and I currently teach a class called "Exploring Your Writer's Voice," at the Writing Salon in San Francisco.

In addition to teaching, I have been published in several on-line publications, was a regular contributor to the on-line magazine for Match.com (now defunct), and continue to publish poetry in literary magazines. I have written a novel, All That Remains, which I am currently revising. I am also developing a new novel that's been sifting around in my imagination for a few years now, which I sometimes work on (and read from) during the workshops. The working title is Not a Love Story.

If you'd like to read some of my writing, and to try out some of my prompts, please check out my blog.