I’m a product of parents whose roots are Oregon pioneers. Family stories from the 1870s on captured my imagination: the cattle drives from Texas to the high desert in southeastern Oregon, and at the turn of the 20th century, tales about building and operating a toll road through this remote ranch country to haul silver ore from mines in nearby Silver City, Idaho to San Francisco. 

During my childhood, I lived in a rock house on my grandparents’ pioneer ranch in Jordan Valley, Oregon, serious cattle country and home to Basque sheepherders, until spring 1954 when my parents moved our young family sight unseen to an even larger cattle ranch in northwest Wyoming–the setting for my debut novel, Hardpan, published by Westerly Directions Press in 2015.

A short film, “The Fence,” based on a draft chapter from Hardpan, was selected for the Director’s Award and the Cinematography Award at the 2008 UCLA Film Festival. 

After publishing Hardpan, readers expressed an interest in the young ranch wife, Jo. Women readers especially were intrigued with how she dealt with adversity. They wanted to know more about her, inspiring me to write my second novel. Jo is the result of my efforts—the publication date to be announced.

My other publications include personal essays in Twenty Twenty: A Stories on Stage Sacramento Anthology and the Round Table Literary Journal. A small collection of haiku poems, “Nordic Impressions,” was published in the 2019 Redwood Writers Poetry Anthology.

In addition, my short stories “Meeting at Midnight,” “The Drop-off,” and “The Invisible Delivery Man,” have been published in Redwood Writers anthologies.

My short story, “Crazed Cat,” won second place from among 74 entries for nonfiction in the 2019 Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference (MCWC) Writing Contest.

I have an MA in English from California State University, East Bay followed by numerous workshops and online courses in creative writing. I’m a member of Women Writing the West (WWW) and have participated in the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference (NVWC); Fishtrap; and the Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference (MCWC).

After finishing my career in university administration at San Francisco State University, I joined Redwood Writers, the largest of 22 branches of the California Writers Club. I served as Vice President of Redwood Writers for several years and co-chaired the biennial Pen to Published Writers’ Conference in 2018.