As a writer and multidisciplinary artist, I explore the combination of text, image, and place. I have written two poetry books, A Poetic Inventory of the Sandia Mountains and Glitches in the FBI; a camping guide to New Mexico, Best Tent Camping: New Mexico; and a graphic novel, Unfiltered: A Cancer Year Diary. I edit and write for Autobiographix, a newsletter about nonfiction comics.
I volunteer with the Arts-in-Medicine program at the University of New Mexico Cancer Center, where I facilitate creative encounters with patients, caregivers, and medical personnel. In waiting rooms and infusion suites, I engage patients in poetry and drawing activities as a way of enhancing medical care through imagination and expression.
My project Poetic Routes, an interactive poetic cartography of Albuquerque, was adopted by the Albuquerque City Planning Department as a way to use poetry as a means of understanding neighborhoods and community character throughout town.
I teach with the University of New Mexico Honors College, where I am the faculty advisor for the nationally acclaimed arts and literature magazine Scribendi. In addition to teaching the ins and outs of literary publishing, I teach creative writing, nonfiction and poetry comics, handmade books and zines, forest bathing, and creative placemaking. I also teach international courses on place and creativity in Glasgow and Edinburgh, Scotland, and Kyoto, Japan.
I have painted murals throughout Albuquerque, acted in a radio drama about the Badlands National Park, and taken students on multi-week camping trips along the Lewis and Clark Trail in North Dakota and Montana.
Research interests: creative writing (creative nonfiction, narrative journalism, and poetry), nonfiction and poetry comics, healing arts, zines and handmade books, place as text, and creative placemaking.