About Me

Originally from Pittsburgh, I held several teaching positions before arriving at Susquehanna in 1980: High School English Teacher, English Instructor at Penn State’s Beaver Campus, and English Department Chair at Le Roy (NY) Central School. Beginning in 1982, I taught workshop courses in poetry and fiction writing, gradually increasing the numbers and adding creative nonfiction until it became my full-time job along with founding the Writers Institute in 1993. In 1996, I created the writing major; in 1999, I began to hire additional faculty. I directed the program until the end of 2014 and retired (sort of) at the end of 2017.

I write and publish in three genres: fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, including books that have won the Flannery O’Connor Prize for Short Story, the Robert C. Jones Prize for Nonfiction, and the Wheeler Prize for Poetry. The most fun I ever had writing a book (Amp’d) was closely following my younger son’s early career as a rock guitarist, both before and during his career with the platinum-selling band Breaking Benjamin. My work has appeared in magazines many people know (Harper’s, The Paris Review) and in many places that few people know (literary magazines).

For nearly thirty years, I wrote bi-weekly opinion columns for a regional newspaper, and a number of those columns were reprinted in large city newspapers and recorded for broadcast on NPR. What was often even more fun was coaching Susquehanna’s men’s tennis team for twenty-one years, winning five team championships (including one when my older son played on the team). Most of all, coaching allowed me to work with and get to know another large group of interesting students, what has always been the best thing about teaching at Susquehanna.

Courses Taught