About Me

Language and books have always seemed magical to me, full of secret codes and surprises.

​

Some of that was passed down from my mother, a great reader. Some of it came from trying to understand what my immigrant grandparents were talking about in Danish. In college, I finally cracked their code. Learning Danish, then French, German, a little Spanish, and some Latin opened up new worlds of words and new cultures to discover. Graduate school led me to the medieval manuscripts room at the French National Library in Paris. Reading one-of-a-kind books written by hand 800 years ago feels like time-travel!

​

After a first career teaching French language, literature, and culture at the college level, I now teach French part-time in grades 6-12, and I’ve returned to my first love: children’s literature. SCBWI (the Society of Children's Writers and Illustrators) has been an essential resource in developing my writing for kids. It has also been a wonderful source of fellowship.

​

Having lived in Denmark, France, Germany (briefly), and six U.S. states, I'm proud to now call diverse Akron, Ohio home. In my heart, though, I’m still a “girl from Yamhill.” I frequently return to the family farm in Oregon, where I grew up with seven siblings, a huge and wondrous garden, and way too many animals to count.

​