I was born in Rhode Island but spent most of my childhood in Petersburg, Virginia, the site of a nine month siege that ended the Civil War and introduced the world to trench warfare. Petersburg recovered from the war, but not school integration 100 years later: white families fled the once-diverse city and took its financial prosperity with them. As a middle class white kid with roots in the North, I participated in many of Petersburg’s worlds, but belonged to none. It  shaped me in ways I’m both proud and ashamed of, and I’ve been processing it in my life and writing ever since.

I left Petersburg in 1999 to earn a B.A. in English from the University of Virginia, where I was fortunate to launch my life as a writer by studying poetry with Charles Wright, Debra Nystrom, and Erika Meitner. I also gained a lifelong passion for live music and invaluable experience in group facilitation thanks to a job with Outdoor Rec.

After graduation, I became the third generation in my family to join the United States Peace Corps. I spent two years in Kajiado, Kenya, where I rode a mountain bike across the savanna, facilitating workshops I’d designed to help Maasai teachers and pastors talk more comfortably about sex and HIV. Summarizing my work in a sentence makes it sound more effective than it felt in reality. In Peace Corps, I learned that genuinely helping people is usually much harder than we want it to be. My first year in Kenya was the most difficult of my life: loneliness, depression, guilt, and inadequacy were the defining emotions.

On the first day of our six-week Peace Corps training, an experienced volunteer told us if we ever felt in danger, “find the nearest mama.” In Kajiado, I was saved by the four mamas who made up the English Department of Olkejuado High School. Alice, Esther, Grace, and Mrs. Ali  were a tight-knit group of women who laughed through every meeting, invited me for dinner many times a week, included me in their frequent celebrations, and shared their lives and stories with me.

By the end of my two-year service, I gained the courage to admit my lifelong ambition: to become a writer. Fueled by regrets that I’d never been as curious about my hometown and its history as I was about Kajiado, I decided to apply for jobs as a newspaper reporter. A local weekly in Northern Virginia gave me a shot. I had no idea what I was doing but loved the opportunity to explore the invisible systems that shaped the community and discover the extraordinary stories hidden behind ordinary facades—like the people living, and dying, in the run-down motels most people saw as nothing but a blight. For a series on the county’s soaring cost of housing, I interviewed people like a white single mom who lost her job and abruptly went from middle class to homeless; and a black man from rural North Carolina who set out every morning to earn enough for one more night in his $50 motel room. 

I also had the privilege to interview people like Greg Commons, the high school history teacher who talked with me for 90 minutes before saying, “I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone else.” He recounted a dream he’d had while his son Matt, an Army Ranger, was deployed in Afghanistan. They were together on a military helicopter that crashed-landed on a mountain peak, under enemy fire. The ramp opened, and they ran onto the snow. “There was a momentary lull. I looked at him and he looked at me and had this, I don’t know Dad, this look of doubt, and I smiled at him and in my mind said, It’s going to be all right. Peace came over his facial expression. The doubt disappeared. And then he got hit.” The next night, an Army Captain knocked on Greg’s door. The day before, Matt’s Quick Response Force had been sent to rescue a team of Navy SEALS on the 10,000-foot peak of Takur Ghar. Their helicopter had been shot down and Matt had been hit in the forehead by a rifle round. He died four hours before Greg saw him in the dream.

In one year at the paper, I won seven awards from the Virginia Press Association for these and other stories, including a journey into DC’s cold case files with a grieving mother and the last hours of Edward Agurs a black man shot dead by the police after robbing a bank with a box cutter. 14 years later, after George Floyd was killed, I realized with shame that I had told Edward’s story, but never thought to question whether this shooting could possibly be justified.

I spent the summer of 2007 riding my bike across the country with my dad, my brother, and a best friend. Two days after getting off my bike, I started an MFA Creative Writing Program at Georgia College. As their first Peace Corps Fellow, I had the opportunity to teach undergrad writing classes; run a program for college seniors teaching creative writing to middle schoolers; study nonfiction under teachers like Martin Lammon, Peter Selgin, and Karen Salyer McElmurray; and write my first book-length manuscript.

In 2010, I moved to Minneapolis at the height of the Great Recession. After a stint as a professional mover, I became a grantwriter for AchieveMpls, an education nonprofit. I took a 20% paycut to make time to write and to teach writing at Minneapolis College of Art & Design. I commuted year-round by bike, and wrote a monthly column of essays reflecting on life in Minneapolis.

In 2014, Liz and I moved to Kauai with four duffel bags and our dog Matilda. For my 34th birthday, Liz bought me a used outrigger canoe paddle and encouraged me to show up at the mouth of the Wailua River for an evening practice with Hui O Mana Ka Pu’uwai, the canoe club “with the power of heart.” The racing season was just wrapping up, but a group of aunties kept meeting all winter to paddle the two-mile river. I was fortunate to start with such patient teachers. Eventually Liz joined the club, and in a few years we went from struggling with the basics of placing our blades in the water and keeping time with other paddlers to using the rhythms of ocean waves to race across the blue-water channels that separate the Hawaiian islands.

Blending with six other people to paddle a 40-foot canoe on a vast ocean will always be one of the most profound experiences of my life. But we stayed on Kauai because of our experiences out of the canoe: gathered around someone’s tailgate after practice, in the shade of a pop-up tent during a day-long regatta, at birthdays, graduations, weddings, vow renewals, holidays and all the other reasons Hawaiian people find to share a good time with the people they love.

For seven years, Liz worked as a psychologist at Kapaa Elementary, while I made a living writing grants and research-based personality tests for 16Personalities. I served as Vice-President of Hui O Mana Ka Pu’uwai outrigger canoe club and a board member of Kauai Hoe Wa’a, the island’s one-man outrigger racing association.

Hawaiian concepts like aloha and ohana have become cliches thanks to tourism marketing and Disney movies, but they are real. It’s been one of the greatest and most unexpected blessings of my life to experience them. The Hawaiian people have all the reason in the world to turn their backs on the outsiders who’ve taken their sovereignty and transformed their islands. Yet they do the exact opposite, at least for those who take a step in their direction. It’s a generosity of spirit that comes so naturally, I have to remind myself that it’s extraordinary.

In Fall of 2021, we moved to Duluth, Minnesota, where I’m happy to be teaching again, reconnecting with family—and with seasons, taking up new sports, and maintaining old ones.