I grew up in Florida, writing stories set in colder, more interesting, more mountainous locales, with trees that weren’t palms. As soon as I could, I left for Vermont, land of Robert Frost and Adirondack chairs. Later I landed in New York City, then in Virginia, where I taught at James Madison University for four years. Up and down the east coast, I've written in coffee shops and cubicles; I began my first novel, Ten Thousand Saints (set in New York City and Vermont), in a palm-sized notebook on the subway, and it will be published this summer, nine years later.
I couldn’t be happier to have revised my way back to the northeast, where I live with my husband, Aaron, and my son, Nico. These days I work on a new novel in my office in Smiddy Hall, and when it’s not too cold, in an Adirondack chair in my backyard.
Areas
- fiction writing
- historical fiction
- the short story cycle
Degrees
- M.F.A. Fiction, University of Virginia, 2005
- B.A. American Literature/Creative Writing, Middlebury College, 2001, Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude
Some Publications
Books
- Ten Thousand Saints, a novel forthcoming from HarperCollins/Ecco, June 2011
Short Stories
- “The Farms,” Best American Short Stories, 2009; Agni, 2008
- “The Kissing Disease,” North American Review, 2007
- “Jump,” Ninth Letter, 2005
- “Thanks for Festooning Me through the Heart,” Indiana Review, 2005
Essays
