I was born in Washington, D.C., moved with my family to Florida at age five, and grew up on the Atlantic coast, close to the beach. The ocean, long walks on the sand, and eventually, skipping school to drive central Florida’s back roads, fed my imagination and the desire to lead a creative life. My obsessions were music, reading and writing.

At first, music won out. I studied clarinet performance, played in orchestras and chamber groups, and collaborated with composers on new, experimental works. Then came opportunities to write about music, which led to years of arts journalism, book writing, and teaching.

I was a professor of music history and English at the University of Wyoming, and founding director of UW’s MFA Creative Writing Program. Following UW, I was a professor of creative writing at the the University of North Texas, and editor of the American Literary Review. I have worked as a librettist as well, having written nine commissioned musical texts, from songs to operas, and have collaborated (as musician and lyricist) with visual artists and dancers in multi-media works.

In 2014, with the support of the Bartlett Foundation, I left my teaching post in Texas to research and write The Life She Wished to Live: A Biography of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Author of “The Yearling.” Previous fellowships and residencies have come from the Rockefeller Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, the Ucross Foundation, the National Park Service, the Jentel Foundation, the Hambidge Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and others. Degrees: Florida State and the University of Michigan (Music Performance), University of Houston (Creative Writing). Post-doctoral fellowship: Cornell University (Music and Writing).

I am currently working on The Devil’s Dream, an opera with composer Mara Gibson (2027 premiere), and a second essay collection. Recent contributions to the arts include serving as a judge for PEN America’s Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography (2024) and continued board membership for the The Museum of Friends (Walsenburg, CO), the Friends of Buncombe County Special Collections (Asheville) and the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Society.

I live outside Asheville, NC with my husband Ken Gerow, a statistician, and our brilliant Australian Shepherd, Cora.