My work springs from forgotten details of the historical past. Scientists once believed swallows hibernated at the bottom of lakes; Russian monks aboard a ship in the arctic claimed they saw Judas Iscariot adrift on an ice floe; Harlem was once a savanna, and PT Barnum once hosted a devious buffalo hunt in Brooklyn. Who were those monks and what were they doing in the arctic? What, exactly, was in a scientist’s 18th century cabinet of wonders? What manner of wildlife wandered the Harlem grasslands? I catch details that flash with this poetic possibility and harness the imaginative worlds that spring up around them. I build novels for these worlds to live in.

My fiction and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Tin House, Post Road, In Pieces: An Anthology of Fragmentary Writing, and Inkwell. I was awarded a 2010 artist residency at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and a residency at Galleri Svalbard, in arctic Norway. I received the 2003 Dana Portfolio Award, given for three book-length manuscripts. I have an MFA in fiction from Sarah Lawrence College.

I grew up in Seattle, spent many years in Oakland, California, and now call Minneapolis home. In addition to my fiction practice, my daily life includes maintaining a robust writing and editing freelance practice and serving as education program manager for the Women’s Environmental Institute.

My background also includes work as a historical ecologist, fish cannery worker, hot springs caretaker, field crew on a bird refuge in SE Alaska, and hiking guide in Big Sur. I was only 23 miles away from Mt. St. Helens when it erupted in 1980, and I credit that experience as the reason I became a writer.