about

I am a writer, scholar, professor, maker . . . and drummer  I teach writing, media, and design in the School of Residential Community-Engaged Arts and Humanities (RCAH), an interdisciplinary living-learning community at Michigan State University.  I also direct the RCAH Language and Media Center (LMC) and Art Studio. As a scholar in writing studies, I explore the ways new technologies shape how we communicate and teach.

In middle age, I feel like I’ve been given a second youth of sorts, a chance to return to two loves that had been on pause for several decades — writing fiction and playing the drums.

As a teenager, I was in various bands with big dreams, but we never got to a point where we were good enough to play out or record anything.  In college, I was an English major with a focus on creative writing.  I went on to get an MFA in fiction from Western Michigan University and began to publish in small literary journals. But then life happened.  Kids, a job, a mortgage.  The tenure clock started to tick.  It was difficult to write, and there was little time to play with other musicians.  Over time, music and writing began to feel like they belonged to a past life.

But the kids grew up.  Getting tenure brought a little stability. Life got a little more manageable.  I’m writing again — publishing stories regularly.  And drumming again, too. A few years back, I started playing with some friends, and we ended up releasing an indie-pop EP (The Callback).  I’m currently the drummer for 517 Funktet, which plays blues, funk, soul, and jazz. We have regular gigs in local restaurants and bars. My bandmates are very talented musicians who challenge me every time we play.

I consider myself a restless person.  It’s difficult for me to stay focused on any one thing for too long.  My interest in writing studies (a field that focuses on how we teach writing effectively) led to a cruiosity about how new technologies are shaping the way we write and teach.  That led to explorations of design and “multimodal” communication (communication that happens through the integration of words, images, sounds, and other media elements). So in a weird way, I’ve stumbled into a life where I get to pursue a wide range of loosely related creative activities — writing, music, video, photography, graphic design, printmaking. My unit at Michigan State University is an interdisciplinary arts and humanities program, so I’m surrounded by a diverse and talented group of students, faculty, and staff who inspire me daily.  Many of us are dabblers, in the best sense of the word.

I try to capture some of my experiments in the areas of photography, video, graphic design, printmaking, and other pursuits on my Instagram site.

I’m fascinated by images of all kinds. But I have a special fondness for birds, butterflies, dragonflies, damselflies, organic textures, industrial textures, found art, minimalist art, visual poetry, asemic poetry, paper art, stencils, gift economies . . . you get the idea. ;)