About Me:
Image by Kat Simecek of Salt & Stone Adventure Photography
Iowa City resident since 2012
bookseller for Prairie Lights in Iowa City (since June 2024) and part-time marketing assistant for PorchLight Literary Arts Center (since July 2026)
2027 finalist for the International Voices in Creative Nonfiction Competition with Vine Leaves Press
2026 finalist for the Aurora Polaris Creative Nonfiction Award with Trio House Press
active member of Iowa City’s PorchLight community & was named a finalist for their first-ever Iowa Writer’s Residency (2025); received the residency in 2026
MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Montana (‘24)
2023-2024 Editor in Chief of the University of Montana’s 50-plus-year-old literary magazine, CutBank
2024 fellow of the LA Review of Books online Publication Workshop
taught 10th grade and AP English at Tsinghua International School in Beijing from 2018-2020 (you can read about my final days abroad at the onset of the pandemic here)
taught at the University of Iowa from 2012-2018 as an ESL Lecturer
grew up in central Ohio, near Columbus