I have been a wordsmith since the age of nine. That’s when I won a hometown essay contest addressing the subject “What America Means to Me.” For my first literary effort I was awarded my first-ever check ($35) and got to ride in the backseat of a festooned convertible in our small town’s Fourth of July parade. I’ve been involved with the written word as a career ever since, working as a freelance writer, contributing editor, and editor for a wide range of periodicals; as a senior editor for book publishers, helping to develop content and finished product; and in one-on-one relationships with individual writers. I am drawn to the memoir as a journey of self-discovery and transcendence, and I love fiction that bridges reality and invention.

I am the author of The Life and Times of Patsy Cline (Country Music Foundation Press, 2023), praised by the the Los Angeles Times as “definitive … reads as her life was lived, like the melodramatic but hopelessly true lyrics of a Nashville ballad.”