First, I was born in the desert and I live in the desert. I identify with the dry heat and sparse landscape. I was born in Tucumcari, New Mexico and I live in Albuquerque. I’ve lived in other states and I’ve traveled widely but I have found no other place like it. I can show you in a day what is so special about this place. It would be better if you give me a week or give me a month and I’ll show you things that exist no where else. White Sands, El Malpais, Chaco Canyon, Carlsbad Caverns, The Lightning Fields, The VLA, the grave of Smokey Bear are all on the list.
I come from a military family and I served with the New Mexico National Guard for eight years. I learned to cook and I learned to type in the military. I also learned that our limitations are often self imposed.
When I was in college for my undergraduate degree I co-founded an arts group we called the Ugly Who Have No Chance and we put together two community art shows through this group. It only lasted two years but it made an impact in the University and in our small community. If you create something new and keep it to yourself then no one will bother you. To make something in the public space invites broad opinions and we got them. I think every student should have to make something happen in their community. Learning to negotiate, to charm, and in some cases disarm the strong opinions of your neighbors is a powerful experience and it helps if you’re a naive and idealistic college student.
My education came in broad steps. It started with a community college, then a small university. By taking advantage of exchange programs I was able to study at the University of Missouri and ultimately took my bachelor’s degree from the University of New Mexico. I was accepted into the MFA Creative Writing Program at Indiana University where my studies were supported by the Chancellor’s Minority Fellowship.
While at Indiana University I was Editor for the literary magazine Indiana Review. For a young writer this opportunity was a dream come true. Soliciting work from writers I admired, discovering new voices, and helping them shape stories and poems into award winning literary publications was a daunting and exhilarating task. And we did win awards. During my tenure we published work that appeared in Best American Poetry and Best American Non-Required Reading, and what was the price of this opportunity? My staff and I spent long hours reading through mountains of manuscripts and sent many hundreds of rejection slips. Most days I did not languish with the muses but instead trained interns to manage the operations of a small magazine and scoured financial spreadsheets looking for unseen expenses that would tip our precariously balanced budget. I loved it all. Whether composing solicitations for famous writers or going cross-eyed writing grant proposals to pay for things like cover art it was an education I wouldn’t trade for anything.
I taught writing at Indiana University and University of New Mexico and I have tutored students in the Albuquerque public schools. I have embraced the informal opportunities to teach including coaching, training, and exchanging feedback in all my roles. Teaching is very important to me but it is something we all do everyday. If we recognize that and embrace it as teaching we might find a little more purpose in the daily grind we all face.
Currently I make websites and help other people make websites. You can find my work through The KGB Studio and I teach a beginning WordPress class for non-profits. It is only in the last few years that I have begun to bring my passions together. I am beginning to build online platforms for writers and writing. There is a tidal shift happening in publishing and a paradigm shift in how readers read. It is incredibly exciting to be working with writers and the web at this time. I am building websites for writers but more than that we need tools that accommodate literature. How I will contribute to this emerging field I am still figuring out.