My Ph.D. in English Literature and Language is from Louisiana State University. As a professor of writing and literature, I taught in Louisiana, Georgia, Poland, England, and Germany. Of my academic writing, two  of my personal favorites are “What’s So Funny About Flannery O’Connor?” and The Fifty Minute Essay.

In 1992 I was awarded a Fulbright appointment in Poland. I drew upon this experience for THE KRAKOW MADONNA, which is written from the first-hand perspective of an outsider on the scene as the Polish people moved forward from communism into democracy, from physical and psychological exhaustion toward hope in self-determination.

I serve as Secretary of the Low Country Chapter of Sisters in Crime, and belong to Mystery Writers of America, recently participating in Bouchercon, SEMWA’s Writers Retreat, SinC’s Adapting to Hollywood, and Killer Nashville 2016. It was a treat to have been named a Runner-Up by The Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine in their “Mysterious Photograph” contest.