About

I write fiction, nonfiction, and copy. My story collection was a finalist for the 2010 Bakeless Literary Prize, and my pieces have won the Pearl Editor’s Prize, the Tobias Wolff Fiction Award, the Potomac Review Fiction Prize and an Inprint Barthelme Memorial Nonfiction Award. My work appears in several journals including The Millions, Salon, The Weeklings, CALYX, Quarterly West, New Ohio Review, Bellingham Review, the Potomac Review and others.

I wrote the bilingual libretto for “A Way Home,” produced by the Houston Grand Opera, and was the librettist for Seattle Opera’s “Our Earth” cycle about a Northwest watershed. I taught composition at the college level for nine years and was a long-time writer-in-residence for Writers in the Schools programs. A former Made at Hugo House fellow, I’ve been a Houston Arts Alliance grant recipient, a resident at Ragdale and a Thomas J. Watson fellow.

I have a B.A. in Spanish and Latin American Studies from Scripps College and an MFA in fiction from the University of Houston, where I was an editor at Gulf Coast. Besides teaching and writing, I’ve managed a feminist coffee shop, worked in my hometown’s general store, lived on Latin American coffee farms, and helped write an engineering lab magazine. For my day job, I write and plan marketing content in the tech industry. It’s pretty fun, and there are free snacks.

Raised in tiny Indianola, WA, I’m fond of the Puget Sound, pie, parentheses (it’s true) and trivia. I live in Seattle with my wife and sons.