About Me

My first full-length collection, Home Truths (Alsop Review Press, 2006), was based on my 2002 creative dissertation for the University of Cincinnati. A revised, expanded edition of the book was issued in 2018 by Transcendent Zero Press. In 2022, the same publisher brought out my edited selection of poetry by Edgar Lee Masters, Down Into This Land—the first-ever “Selected Poems” to represent Masters’ entire 50-year career. Individual pieces of mine have appeared in a range of print and online journals including Bryant Literary Review, Dodging the Rain, Fiddlehead, Iron Horse Review, River City, Solo, and Third Coast Review, as well as the 2024 print anthology Central Avenue Then and Now, and three special issues of The Brontë Society Gazette (my current book-in-progress, Livings, focusses on daily life in the family’s Yorkshire home).

In addition, I was a featured reader at the international “Brontë  2020” conference, and have given several readings from my creative work at the Louisville Conference on Language and Literature. A student of poets Sandra Kohler, David Young, Christopher Buckley, Don Bogen, and Andrew Hudgins, I hold a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from the University of Cincinnati, and was a full-time English professor for more than 20 years before retiring from Jackson State Community College in 2022 in order to devote myself full-time to writing.

I was born and raised in Dayton, Ohio, but am currently living with my wife Elizabeth in Jackson, TN. In June 2024, my work was recognized with an Individual Artist Fellowship in poetry from the state of Tennessee.