I spent three years in Japan (1990-1993), as the first American and first woman to serve as visiting professor of English at Shizuoka University. This experience informed my first novel, American Fuji, which was a book club pick of the Honolulu Advertiser and a nominee for the Kiriyama Prize. Recently, I earned an MFA at Vermont College of Fine Arts in poetry. My chapbook, Bicycle Lotus, won the 2015 Turtle Island Poetry Award. A second chapbook, Scavenger Hunt, came out in 2018. My first full book of poetry, Such Luck, is my newest book. I teach freshman comp and a few other stray courses at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, lead a reading group at a men's prison, and tramp around the woods in New Hampshire.