ABOUT ME

I am a former tropical field biologist and was, for a time, the world's worst Zen monk. A graduate of Brown University, I have won the Steinbeck Fellowship in Creative Writing, the University of California Poet Laureate Award, and Christian Kiefer chose TOO BRIGHT TO SEE (then-titled THE EVOLUTION OF FLIGHT) in a blind contest for the Maurice Prize for best novel manuscript. I am also at work on a memoir about falling in love with a woman for the first time on a semester abroad in Italy, Greece, and Turkey, where my life almost ended on a road in rural Turkey and was saved by strangers with whom I did not share a common language, Lidia Yuknavitch’s THE CHRONOLOGY OF WATER meets Cheryl Strayed’s WILD. Finally, I am the Founder & CEO of GirlBlazer, a social enterprise that makes children's books about girls who are changing the world, written by the girls themselves.