I’ve been writing stories… and living to create stories… my whole life.  Story is my language.  My way into understanding.  My path towards sense-making and sense-smashing.  It helps me land on the earth even as it opens me to the cosmos, beyond the limits of my singular imagination.  Story allows me to ask questions, to unravel the threads of what is here and to see if and how I want to re-weave them into a new meaning that allows me to live in a state of more freedom, authenticity, clarity and joy.   

I’ve taught writing for years to high school students and received my MFA in Creative Writing from the New School in 2008.  After that I wrote as a freelancer for the New York Times. Alongside my journalism, I’ve published travel essays, poetry, and stories in literary magazines.  Most recently my essay - We Shall Call Ourselves Beloved - was included in the beautiful five-book collection Elementals, published by The Center for Humans and Nature. 

To read my current writing, please consider subscribing (and donating) to Notes from the Heartland. 

Explore a Selection of Writing:

Notes from the Heartland

My weekly newsletter is a home for laughter, curiosity, confession, and exploring the texture of everyday life. Using discomfort as an opportunity to challenge beliefs and become curious, these musings tells stories of the mystical in the mundane, the extraordinary in the ordinary, the humor in the hard stuff, and the treasure in all the seeming tedium of being human.

The Brotherhood of the Wind

With a new relationship and the perfect leather jacket, I set off with my boyfriend and his BMW for a cross country motorcycle trip. Would the trip kill us or cement our love? From kangaroo rats to Harley gangs, hail storms to wildfire warnings, we explore the dangers and delights of communing with nature, the joys and challenges of the wind in your face, and how to find one’s role on the road (and in relationship) as passenger and sidekick, observer and participant, leader and follower.

Pure Vida

Stir crazy as first-time parents with a new baby with the winter blues setting in, my ex and I set off to spend a few months in Costa Rica. Neither of us spoke Spanish and we were hours from the nearest hospital. What could possibly go wrong?

Let the Building Begin

Preparing for the birth of my son in a 500 square foot apartment with pile drivers pounding outside my Brooklyn window, a backyard inflatable pool shoved between the bookshelves, and a midwife known as The General, I explore what it means to become a mother and begin the spiritual training and practice of a lifetime.

Lives Overlap on the Track in Brooklyn's Mccarren Park

A unique profile for the Sports section of the NYT, this story studies, celebrates and observes the joy of bodies in movement and motion -and the community that these bodies create - on a well-loved track in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

3 Beanbags and 26.2 Miles

In anticipation of the NYC marathon, and all the amazing humans who complete the run, this story profiled and celebrated a man in his mid-sixties who had not only run many marathons, but had joggled - jogging while juggling - his way through each of them.

Uniting Body and Mind, with a bit of a Stretch

Part of a four-story series I wrote about competitive yoga for the NYT, this article introduces the competition and the participants as they prepare.

Waiting on the Wind

One of the many stories I wrote for the Neighborhood Joint column, this story features and celebrates a kite-surfing shop in Long Island.

Twists and Turns Lead to a New Life

Part of a four-story series on competitive yoga, this article profiles Jared McCann, the New York City based regional yoga champion as he prepares to compete in the International competition.