I can’t write if I’m not roaming around… I love cafés and even bars, where I’m that oddball all alone with a notebook. I write outdoors a lot – I like to walk out to a local area of farm fields flanking the Connecticut River, just below the line of the Holyoke Range, then park …
Read more “Writing in the Woods”
On May 14, 2024, my book for kids, THE MONARCHS OF WINGHAVEN, will launch into the world! The event will take place at Broadside Bookshop at 7pm. Kids of all ages are welcome, especially those age 8-12, the book’s target audience. We’ll have a little after-party for grownups, too. Please join me.
Last month, I visited the extraordinary natural history collection at the University of Massachusetts. Hidden in the depths of Morrill Science Center, it’s not easily accessible to public view, and I was shown around by generous and knowledgeable biologist & curator Kate Doyle. Kate alerted me to a sumptuous art exhibition now on display at …
Read more “The beauty of collections”
Clearstories, my poetry/image collaboration with photographer Stephen Petegorsky, is showing at R. Michelson Galleries in Northampton, MA this month. The exhibition, which features 17 of the pairs, was written up in a fine article by Steve Pfarrar in the Daily Hampshire Gazette. We also were interviewed on WHMP’s Talk the Talk along with gallery manager …
Read more “Clearstories at R. Michelson Galleries”
My latest journalistic piece came out in The Shoestring last month. The piece explores the conflict between the need to produce green energy in Massachusetts, and the pressure of solar development on lands we’d prefer to conserve, like forests and farmlands. What happens when large-scale, for-profit solar threatens green space? Are the local citizens challenging …
Read more “The Forest and the Trees”
I was delighted to ring in the New Year with a published poem in the storied magazine Scientific American. The poem is part of my Clearstories collaboration with photographer Stephen Petegorsky. In “Baby Crocodile,” I drew on a memory of an encounter with a Florida alligator (a species of crocodilian). These reptiles seem cold and …
Read more “Baby Crocodile in Scientific American”
My middle grade novel, The Monarchs of Winghaven, has a launch date! Sammie and Bram, my dauntless bird- and butterfly-watching protagonists, will meet the world on May 14, 2024. Illustrations by Naila Moreira, THE MONARCHS OF WINGHAVEN
Celebrating the life of photographer Paul Ickovic (1944-2023). He will be greatly missed. I wrote this essay about him in 2017. ~ The first time I met Paul Ickovic, whom I came to know as Pablo, he interrupted me as I sat working at an outdoor table of a cafe in Northampton, Massachusetts. He said …
Read more “Paul Ickovic, photographer & friend”
I’ve been collaborating with photographer Stephen Petegorsky on a set of paired poems and photos, titled Clearstories. An excerpt from the project has now been published as an online chapbook at Terrain.org: Clearstories The project explores animal specimens that have been cleared and stained, a process in which they are treated with an enzyme to …
My poem “Porcupine” is published this month in the Cider Press Review, and can be found here: Porcupine I wrote this poem watching a porcupine cropping grass at Smith College’s MacLeish Field Station in Whately, MA. I also caught a photo, shown above.