Poet-Cookbook Author-Essayist-Editor
Conceived in Paris, France and born in Norman, Oklahoma to a Jewish mother and a gay Christian Scientist father, I have embodied contradictions from an early age. I embrace it all, especially the mysteries revealed from wrestling with words. A poem is a place that can hold a paradox in such a small space, it will open up to the infinite before you can catch your breath. My writing personae have taken me from art book editor and cookbook author to essayist, poet, and teacher.
I have a B.A. from Duke University and an M.A. from the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Southern California. I worked in entertainment public relations, the television programming industry, and an art book publishing house. For eight years, I have worked at a writing center that is part of a community college in the South Bronx, where I have been named Poet in Practice. In December of 2023, I organized an afternoon of Peace & Poetry, featuring well-known New York poets.
While my earlier career focused on prose, essays, art books and cookbooks, poetry has been my primary passion for more than a decade. I have studied poetry at the Frost Place in Franconia, at Cave Canem in Brooklyn, and in master classes at the Unterberg Poetry Center with generous teachers such as Sharon Dolin and Jeanne Marie Beaumont. My poem “Scallop Eyes” was a finalist for Omnidawn’s broadside poetry prize. Another poem, “Genesis,” was recognized as “Highly Commended” in an Amnesty International Social Justice Poetry Contest. My manuscript “Bone Key” has been long listed and shortlisted for contests. Two poems were finalists and published in the American Writers Review 2020. I won a prize from the Tennessee Williams Exhibit in Key West for my poem “Rose’s Menagerie.”
Eight of my essays have been published on The Huffington Post, and a memoir piece was sold to the Guardian. I love exploring all the neighborhoods of New York City, especially my new East Village one where I delight in the blossoms of Stuyvesant Park, brew from the Coffee Project, and runs along the East River.
Below see where my poems have appeared online and in print. Click on underlined titles to read poems or purchase publications where my poems have appeared.
American Writers Review 2020 Blue Fifth Review Calyx Caesura: The Journal of Poetry Center San José.
Crosswinds Poetry Journal Dime Show Review
Enizagam
Flying South Georgia Review
Greening the Earth: An Anthology of Poems on Nature InPatient Press Interim
Kaleidoscope Magnolia Review
Melancholy Hyperbole
Minerva Rising
Mom Egg Review, Mom Vox blog
My Cruel Invention: A Contemporary Poetry Anthology
Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of
Subversive Verse Naugatuck River Review
Phantom Kangaroo
The Poeming Pigeon (music anthology)
Poet Lore
Poetry Nook
Pomme Journal Prelude
Solares Hill
Sport Literate Tiny Seed Press Touchstone Literary Magazine Tuesday; An Art Project
Truck
Tulane Review
Unlost: A Journal of Found Poetry