About Me

My grandfather was a doctor who wrote nine books on breathing; my grandmother made paintings of sailboats, Baltimore row houses, skies that drip as though they might melt; my mother writes musicals and plays. Books spilled off of the bookshelves that lined nearly every wall of the houses where I grew up. My mother gave me more reading lists and assignments to watch films than toys. We were a theater family living in New York City; sometimes at dinner we ate while watching movies, and often we went to see performances at dinnertime, fitting in the food around the edges. Stories run through my veins.

There have been stories that were elixirs for me, rearranging me, dissolving something in me so something else could grow, letting me breathe. I write because I am compelled to, and I walk through my days with deep gratitude that I am able to occupy this liminal space where mystery, something of wonder, happens. The fact that with luck the stories and other forms I write reach people in a way I myself never could astonishes me. The enigma at the core of the artistic process is deeply humbling.

Photo credit for black and white photo: Erin Kyle Bartel