Poetry is my way of connecting to the world. I started in high school, making up new lyrics to Robert Plant songs, oddly enough. Then I discovered James Wright, Anne Sexton, Maggie Anderson, Ron Houchin . . . and I keep falling further and further into the magic.

Even while working as a banker, a job I learned to respect, I still wrote poems published in journals like Appalachian Review, Still: The Journal, Pirene’s Fountain, I-70 Review, Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry, and others. I’m a three-time winner of the West Virginia Writers, Inc. annual poetry contest.

In 2024, I fulfilled the first of two long-time dreams when I graduated from the Naslund Mann School of Writing at Spalding University with an MFA in poetry. The second, which happened just this year, was becoming a full-time college English teacher, a job I’ll begin this fall at BridgeValley Community and Technical College in South Charleston, WV.