Bio
I grew up in New York and Connecticut and graduated from Smith with a degree in Sociology. I loved my major and even went on to earn a master’s degree in the field. To this day, I am totally fascinated by people and their interactions.
But academic pursuits were not all I was drawn to. As far back as I can remember, music made me want to move, and I wanted so badly to dance. I’d like to think my mom, a gifted pianist, would have encouraged my interest in dance. But she was mentally ill and pretty much out of the picture during my childhood. My dad, on the other hand, was not eager for me to go into the field. I was not even allowed to take dance classes during my senior year of high school, let alone apply to a college with a dance major.
Despite the lack of parental support, I ended up with a long and rewarding career as a professional modern dancer and dance educator. Teenagers were always my favorite age group to work with. I spent several summers teaching at Interlochen, later taught at a performing arts high school, and then spent eight summers counseling students attending the Governor’s School for the Arts in Kentucky. For many years, I also wrote articles about the challenges of adolescence for parenting magazines.
When I retired from dance, I felt pretty lost. I’d always been an avid fiction reader, and long after I became an adult, I continued to love reading young adult novels. Despite all my writing experience having been in nonfiction, I decided to try writing a young adult novel and discovered a new passion. I returned to school and earned my MFA in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University and have continued to write—and write—and write.
Currently, I live in Louisville, Kentucky with my husband and cat Lucy. I’m the ridiculously proud mom of two grown sons and grandmother of five.
