It started in the arts & crafts station in kindergarten. I got in trouble for going there too many times after recess. But I had a story to tell. I was compelled to write it down in bright yellow marker and read it to the class. 

Sometimes, it’s a song on a ukulele. Other times, it’s a vase interpreted by the chunks of colors and negative space it’s made up of. Many times—a full book worth of times—it’s micro moments crafted into verses of poetry. 

I graduated from Lehigh University in 2018 with a degree in marketing and finance and a minor in creative writing. I remember picking Marketing because a woman in the admissions office explained how you could balance a business (“practical”) career with creativity. I went into the creative writing track assuming I would write short stories and “work my way up” to a novel. I considered creative nonfiction to better supplement my business classes. But when no other class was available one semester, I landed in an intro to poetry class that changed everything. 

I had just learned about flash fiction the semester before. Poetry seemed similar—with its own set of rules to break, of course. I once wrote a 100-word modern fairy tale for that flash fiction class, then later evolved that story into a poem. To me, poetry is capturing or suggesting an entire life in a single moment. It leaves me breathless and aching for more. 

I took an advanced poetry class my senior year, working one-on-one with my professor, Bob Watts, on an anthology of poems (many of which are featured in Safer In The Pillow Fort). This poetry was awarded the Kachel Prize, featured in Lehigh’s literary magazine, and read out loud in a poetry reading and discussion event at Bethlehem Area Public Library.

The craft of poetry also comes alive in my day-to-day. As Director of Brand Messaging at a B2B marketing agency, I’m charged with tugging the emotional thread of a rational purchase decision. I get to dig for stories and then blast them from the rooftops.

But I still have other stories to tell. 

The next few could not be contained to poems or short prose. Can a human find a home on an alien planet? Can a doomed mission in deep-space find life in the fall?

These are the questions my novels-in-progress try to answer. Sign up for my newsletter for updates!