About

Wee Me

I was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts and lived there until I was old enough to vote. In school I was the painfully shy and quiet kid in the back of the classroom who rarely or never said anything. I found middle school to be rather tortuous, what with bullies and my Olympic level lack of social skills. High school was a bit better, but only after I took up track & field and cross-country. I was an uber-nerd while growing up (still am in many ways) with all the nerd credentials: bad haircut, thick glasses, poor clothing choices, awkward, bad skin, braces: you get the picture.
I went to the University of Maine and graduated with two degrees, one in Biology and one in Botany.

I have, as with most writers, had heaps and heaps of jobs, such as: teacher, project manager, nuclear power plant custodian, laborer, dishwasher, carpenter, painter, convenience store cashier, resident assistant, office rat, photocopy jockey, etc.

At the Smithsonian with a friend

After graduation and some time scraping money together, I flew to New Zealand to visit relatives (my grandmother was a Kiwi) and hitchhiked the length and breadth of the country for about three months. When I came back to the States I wasn't sure what to do and temped for many, many businesses in Portland, ME for almost a year until I found a job teaching science in Cali, Colombia, South America. I taught there for two years, spending summers working for the Maine College of Art in Portland. I then taught in Lincolnville, Maine for a year, returned to Cali, Colombia for a year and then decided to teach ESL in Yamagata, Japan. I met the beautiful Chika W. working at the same language school and we moved to Portland, Maine, where we married in 2003. We lived there in Portland for five years, during which time I taught in Gray, where I refound my absolute and total love of teaching. We left Maine to look for new challenges, as well as the fact that my wife had had quite enough of the long Maine winters. So we packed our bags and moved to a small, remote, very beautiful island, Rota, in the Northern Mariana Island Chain where we lived from 2007-2008.

I earned my MFA in Creative Writing from Converse College back in 2013 and lived in the upstate of South Carolina for a long stretch. I now teach science overseas and, occasionally, college-level composition. After some time teaching in Lisbon, Portugal and Malta, I currently live in Tivat, Montenegro.

Window Reflection in Narita Airport