Hello

How I Got Here

Most writer bios begin with some variation on "I was always a reader/writer. I read all of Jane Austen in utero and had written my first epic space-fantasy trilogy just ahead of starting kindergarten."

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This one is no different.

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My origin story was my 5th-grade teacher, Mr. Lundberg, telling me that I should be a writer because—and I am not making this up—I tended to "show, rather than tell." I've never forgotten that vote of confidence. I've also never forgotten that his comment came on a story I never actually finished.

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Poetic, really.

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For many years, my most prized possessions were my notebooks and my Roget's Thesaurus. Accordingly, I never wrote blue when I could write azure and my early prose was unquestionably on the amethyst side. Fine. I had time. But many a heroine finds herself pulled to a side quest, and so it was with me. As part of my voracious youthful reading, I plowed through Jane Goodall's "My Friends, the Wild Chimpanzees" and was henceforth hooked on the idea of being Some Sort of Biologist. I became a molecular biologist and did my very best to Save the World. Many of my projects were objectively successful, but I regret to report that they did not, in fact, Save the World.

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They did, however, remind me of the value of Story.

A scientific project is really just a story: Here is an interesting puzzle, here is my quest to solve the puzzle, here are the people who joined the quest, here are the triumphs and setbacks we encountered along the way, here is our final—for now—answer to the puzzle.

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It was an easy and natural transition for me. 

​​I once built things with DNA. Now I build things with words.

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