My undergraduate degree in English is from the University of Pennsylvania; my MFA in Writing is from Vermont College. My master's thesis---equal parts original fiction and textual analysis---explored the use of sensory language to express knowledge in fiction. I have published several short stories, co-authored a developmental writing textbook, and edited two volumes of a scientific study commissioned by the White House Office of Technology Policy on 1993 Midwest floods. As a writer, I have a profound and passionate love of literature; as a student and teacher, I am fascinated by literature as a cultural artifact shaped and permeated by the ideas, values, and technology of its time. Currently, I am experimenting with writing a series of related short stories in an attempt to do in prose what the lyrics in a traditional ballad or a sonnet sequence do.