Writing

It's not so much about carving out a writerly life, but having a life of writing. I happen to be good at making sentences, revising them, and engaging others about their sentences.

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Publishing

Imagine books as rocks across a stream, I've leapt from one to another over an improbable career publishing everything from chapbooks to photo books, scholarship to literature.

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Teaching

Formal teaching occurred later in my life, but I've always been a teacher: from guiding authors through the publishing process to showing young people that their stories have power. Today, I’m the director of Mason Creative Writing (BFA and MFA programs) and co-founder of Watershed Lit: Center for Literary Engagement and Publishing Practice at George Mason University.

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Arts Administration

Since 2004, nonprofit CityLit Project has presented public programs, delivered writers workshops, engaged youth through creative writing, and grown a literary imprint. Still going strong after I stepped down, its work continues to serve readers and writers around Maryland and across the country.

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