I grew up in Sweeny, Texas and began my studies here at Brazosport College. I've also studied in England and Pennsylvania. I have taught for Austin Community College and Texas Lutheran University. Currently I teach English Composition I and II and Zombie Literature.
Ph.D Literature & Criticism, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
M.A. English Literature, Texas State University
B.A. English, Texas State University
Winner of the 2018 Gris-Gris Flash Fiction Prize
Finalist for the 2018 Lascaux Prize in Flash Fiction
"O'Reilly's Magic Talking Dream Box" in Cimarron Review, 2018.
"Animals at the Ball" in New Flash Fiction Review. Issue 11, 2018.
"The Moon in Her Doorway," Daily Science Fiction, May 26 2017
"The Last Passenger Pigeon," Nature. Feb 2017
"Jericho" in Flash Fiction Online. Sept. 2016.
"Phase Change," a short story in Cats in Space. Paper Golem Press, 2015
Aftermath," a short story in Zombies: More Recent Dead by Prime Books.
"Subsidance," a short story in The New Orleans Review March, 2012.
Out of the Earth: Ecocritical Readings of Irish Texts. Cork University Press, 2010. Foreword by John Elder.
To Everything on Earth: New Writings on Fate, Community, and Nature. Texas Tech University Press, 2009. Foreword by Bill McKibben. Starred review in Publishers Weekly.
The Sacred and Sublime: Caves in American Literature. Dissertation.
“What We Leave Behind.” What Wildness is This: Women Write About the Southwest. Foreword by Kathleen Dean Moore. University of Texas Press, 2007. Winner of the 2008 WILLA Literary Award for Creative Nonfiction.
“Tales from the Deep: Mammoth Cave & American Literature.” Journal of Kentucky Studies, 2005.
“The Edge of the World: Feminist Geography and Literature.” Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, 2004.
“‘Sympathy between man and nature’: J.M. Synge and Riders to the Sea” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 2004.
“Artistry of Hunger: Desire and Appetite in Desert Solitaire.” Western American Literature, 2004.
“King Lear as the Green Man.” The Explicator, 2002.
NISOD Teaching Excellence Award
Minnie Piper Professor Nominee
The Writers’ League of Texas Fellowship for Creative Nonfiction
The Charles Oliver Memorial Award for Fiction
The William E. Bard Book Award for Children’s Fiction