About Me

Me in Paris in April 2009

I was raised in Virginia and fortunate to have lived near Washington DC. I spent hours in the national Gallery of Art, sitting and writing poetry—with a pencil. Pens were not allowed.

I attended schools up and down the East Coast (New York to Florida). At the University of South Florida, I was selected to be a university representative to the South Florida Poetry Festival, and those poems were my first true poetry publications.

After school I taught English, reading, special education, study skills, speed reading, statistics and research design. Then I changed careers to mainframe programming, then to instructional design for major corporations. Lastly, I returned to my great love of teaching, at a favorite level, the community college.

During most of this time I wrote. I wakened an hour early (5 to 5:30 AM) and wrote until I went to work. Often I wrote at night after grading papers. My first computer was an Apple IIe with WordPerfect, version 1. I loved it. When my husband studied for his Engineer-In-Training (EIT) and Professional Engineer (PE) examinations, I was free to write all evening and weekends.

I moved from Los Angeles to San Antonio for so many reasons I couldn’t name them all. I continued to teach and write and even started a Poets & Writers Group at the college where I taught. Now I teach senior citizens poetry. Many are award-winning poets, and I feel honored.

Enough about me, except to say I hope you enjoy the 40+ poems in Pillow Book of the Flower Samurai. The diary/prose with poetry was the style of aristocratic ladies in the Heian Period (794-1185).