I grew up in Boulder, Colorado and moved to Washington to attend Western Washington University where I earned a BA in history. After graduation, I moved back to Colorado where I worked various odd jobs—office clerk, landscaper, carpenter, "janitor," and SAT tutor—and eventually enrolled at the University of Colorado to earn my professional teaching certification. In 2001, my family and I moved back to the beautiful Pacific Northwest. My first novel, Comfort Food, won the 2006 Independent Publisher Book Award for Best Regional Fiction (West-Pacific). My short fiction has appeared in 10,000 Tons of Black Ink, Absinthe Revival, Apparatus Magazine, The Autumn Sound Review, Beyond the Margins: A Literature and Art Magazine, Brittle Star (UK), and Write This. I have taught various subjects at the secondary level, and I now teach online high school English and social studies classes in Olympia, Washington. I earned my MFA from Rainier Writing Workshop (PLU), and I'm working on my second novel.