I grew up in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, home of Thelonius Monk and the best barbeque in the world, the town where Jack Kerouac had a library card, and where Jim Thorp played a controversial game of baseball. I was encouraged to write by wonderful English teachers, Elizabeth Hardy and Peggie Murray among them, and entertained by the wonderful storytellers of eastern NC.

I traded the flat lands for the mountains and completed an English major at Appalachian State University. I traded the mountains for sky scrapers and received a Masters through the creative writing program at New York University taking workshops with Galway Kinnell, Sharon Olds and Ruth Stone.

While at NYU, I began working with Sharon Olds teaching creative writing to patients at Goldwater Memorial Hospital on Roosevelt Island. I returned to North Carolina to continue offering writing in a medical setting. I approached Duke Medical Center and was hired by Janice Palmer to offer writing workshops to oncology patients in 1986.

I currently serve five patient populations holding weekly journaling classes and distributing free journals. I encourage patients and family members to write to cope with the stress of extended hospital stays, for diversion, to engage themselves creatively, and to help them plan for life changes.

In the summers, I am a visiting lecturer teaching creative writing in the Department of English at Duke. It is good to return to the classroom each year to a workshop setting.