I grew up in the small town of Asheboro, North Carolina, surrounded by family on both sides who had lived in the area for generations. They were Quakers and Methodists, farmers and preachers, good old boys and bridge players. Mine was the perfect childhood, playing in the neighborhood until dark, bringing home arms full of library books to read on summer nights when it was too hot to do anything but read. ​Words became my tools for making sense of the world at an early age. I’d stretch across the den rug and make up stories, always with a happy ending, and I’d illustrate my stories with pastel chalk and then run to the kitchen and read them out loud to my mother as she cooked supper. I’d crawl in my father’s lap and interrupt him as he read the afternoon paper. “Do another! Do another!” my parents said, and I did. It was a childhood of books and words, art and imagination, and making things, always making things.

After high school, I couldn't wait to get out of my small town and begin a new life, but nearby Greensboro was where I found my academic home for the next seven years. Soon my new husband Bill and I were off to Virginia and later Kentucky. Years later, with a growing son, we returned to the region of our childhoods. Today I carry inside me a small part of each of those places I have lived and all of the family members who helped raise me, and I remember their stories, even though some of my relatives say I embellish a bit.

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Since then, my writing journey has taken me to many states and countries, introduced me to people of all kinds, and changed the way I think about the world. I no longer want to leave the place of my childhood; I want to understand it.  I aim to tell the story of ordinary people like my kinfolk, of a region rich with tradition but plagued by heartache, frailty, and a struggle to move forward. In my work, whether poetry or fiction, I hope my readers will find not just the Southern experience but the universal human one that transcends region, dialect, and culture.