I earned a BA in Engish from Luther College and an MA in English with Creative Emphasis from Iowa State University and a PhD in English with Creative Emphasis from Bowling Green State University before becoming a professor of English at The University of Northwestern Ohio, where I taught composition, literature, and creative writing courses for 25 years. I am now living in the Ann Arbor, Michigan, area and happy to be enjoying the writing (and reading) life, working remotely as a test scorer to generate some income. I am also exploring the entrepreneurial life, embarking on a role as a Fierce Writing group leader, using poetry and “jump-off” lines from it to inspire women to freewrite in order to learn more about themselves. My chapbook is titled Letting Go, and my poems have been published in Poets to Come: A Poetry Anthology, two editions of Women Speak: Women of Appalachia Project, A Room of Her Own Foundation’s Waves: A Confluence of Women’s Voices, and Moonstone Press’s S/He Speaks 3: Voices of Women and Trans & Nonbinary Folx and Freedom: for Who, to do What, to Whom, among others. My essay “The Notorious E.E.D.: Rap in the Poetry of Emily Dickinson” is a chapter in The Language of Emily Dickinson.