I’m a writer, musician, (very) amateur filmmaker and educator with home bases in the Midwest and Pacific Northwest.

The interdisciplinary nature of my practice reflects its resistance to oversimplified categorizations of identity. Working primarily in poetry, memoir and songwriting, I critique the narrowness of mental health diagnoses by depicting them as expansive experiences including moments of wonder; I write about desire, close relationships and body image with similar goals of complication.

Using text from self-help books, archival research and critical theory (as well as my own music and occasional short analog films), I build hybrid works that are equal parts rigorous, humorous and intimate. I think of identity as a constantly re-drafted collection of stories we tell about ourselves and stories others tell about us for their expediency. My work contrasts these two kinds of stories and asks how a self is built out of the distance.

My poetry and nonfiction prose have been published by the Academy of American Poets, Pom Pom Lit, NPR Music, Oregon Quarterly and others. I’m currently a Walter Nathan Fellow at the University of Minnesota’s Creative Writing MFA Program, where I received the James Wright Prize in Poetry. My full-band music project is called Babytooth.