I taught writing and literature in the English Department at the University of Idaho. Before college teaching for twenty-two years, I taught high school English at Lewiston High School and English & French at Father Lopez in Daytona Beach.  

While at the University of Idaho, I developed a new approach to argument and co-authored Multiple Genres, Multiple Voices: Teaching Argument in Composition and Literature (Heinemann).

I am the recipient of several teaching awards, including the University of Idaho’s highest Teaching Excellence Award.

Teaching has been my calling though I started out pre-med.  I loved dissecting frogs and cats–split the lark and you’ll find the music, Emily Dickinson invites.  Now, I dissect owl pellets, layer after layer.  

Since retirement I co-edited Come to the Table: Recipes for Loving and Serving for the Center for Benedictine Life @ the Monastery of St. Gertrude in Cottonwood, ID. I now facilitate writing retreats at the Center for Benedictine Life at the Monastery of St. Gertrude in Cottonwood, ID where I am an Oblate, a volunteer and serve on the Spirituality of Arts committee and the Oblate Newsletter team.

I am married, fifty-seven years, five wedding rings and one marriage.  “I want to hear that story!” one of my students once said.  I’m working on it!  Mother of three children (two sons and one daughter), grandmother of five, great grandmother of three.  My teepee encampment.

I was born in Columbus, Ohio and spent my childhood years split between the Colville Reservation in Keller, WA and Omak, WA.  Since then I have lived in New York, Colorado, Florida and now Idaho.  My half-Colville Indian grandfather and full-blooded Dane grandmother wove strands of stability, simplicity, and faith, grounded in Creation and family, in me.