For the past 40 years I have taught English in a high-poverty high school in rural South Carolina, and every other week I share the voices of my students and my concerns about education and parenting in an op-ed column in The Charlotte Observer. "Notes from a Classroom: Reflections on Teaching" is a compilation of some of those columns. "A Child's Book of Virtues" is my retelling of class stories and myths for intermediate readers. "Orphans in the Black" is an anthology by 19 terrific science fiction and fantasy writers and includes my short story "The Alien." I have also published in "We Are Not This," Luck, Main Street Rag, and the Charlotte Writers Anthology. My short story "Why Women Moan in Bed" won the Norman Mailer Fiction Prize in 2012, and "Proxy" was a finalist in the Tennessee Williams Fiction Contest in 2015.