ABOUT
ME
Two Worlds
While I was growing up, my family divided our time between our "regular" life in Jacksonville, Florida and what felt like our "real" home on Cumberland Island, Georgia. In Jacksonville, my younger sister and I had many typical experiences of children in the 1990s: selling Girl Scout cookies, recreating history with our American Girl dolls, playing the Oregon Trail computer game, and watching Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals way too many times to count (maybe less typical). On Cumberland, we escaped to a world without telephones, computers, and television (unless we could turn the giant antenna over our house just so to pick up a signal). We climbed trees, went fishing, swam in the ocean, created imaginary "houses" on the beach, and explored the woods--similar (in some ways) to the lives of our ancestors who first came to Cumberland in the early 19th century. ​I was told from a young age that I carried the legacy of the oldest family still on the island, the ones who remained throughout wars, social change, and the island's transition into a National Park.​​​
I also shifted between my everyday experiences and the imaginary ones I found in books. One of my favorite (and nerdiest) memories if when I first visited our community's library at age five and realized I could check out any books I wanted. I also started writing stories in elementary school, but I try to forgot the melodramatic fan fiction of the Titanic movie that I wrote in middle school!
My love of reading and writing led me to major in English at Jacksonville University and to seek a teaching career. I earned an MA in English from Georgia Southern and a PhD in English from the University of Southern Mississippi. Now, I'm an associate professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, where I teach composition, American literature, and children’s/young adult literature. I also enjoy teaching service-learning courses, where my students and I engage in partnerships that promote literacy in our local community.
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Despite my immersion into academic jargon, I've never been able to untangle myself from my roots, even when I trip over tough, knotted ones. I oscillate between two writing worlds: academic literary criticism and historical fiction novels. My academic articles on 19th- and early 20th-century girls' literature have shaped my interest in how place both empowers and limits Southern girls and women of all races. In addition, my family's history in coastal Georgia inspires my fiction writing and allows me to stay connected to the beaches and salt marshes, even when I can't visit Cumberland as often as I'd like .
When I'm not writing and teaching, I enjoy yoga, walking my dog Bilbo, and reading books to my daughters.
Some of my Favorite Books
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Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
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Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
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Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor
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Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
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The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
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To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
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Oral History by Lee Smith
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Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
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Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein
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The Color Purple by Alice Walker