About Me

From Scientist to Novelist

From growing up in Brooklyn next to the elevated subway to living a mile down a gravel road in the Texas Hill Country, two threads have run through my life—my love of books and my love of the natural environment. The latter led to a formal education focused on ecology; the former has led to trying my own hand at telling stories.

While in graduate school studying aquatic ecology, I realized I was as much interested in the scientists around me as the science and my first novel was conceived, an allegorical coming-of-age fable. That ecofiction was followed by another environmentally focused novel, in which an oft-repeated battle unfolds between those who hold their rural landscape dear and those who want to cash in on it. In this novel, the environment is not only the battleground but a source of healing for the protagonist.

Along the way of bringing those two novels to completion and working as a copy editor, I found the satisfaction—the concise and focused prose—of writing short stories (flash fiction) and short personal narratives. From nonfiction to flash fiction to novels, what binds my work is that it is foremost character driven. My protagonists typically are on a journey of growth that examines their own and others’ perceptions of the world. Themes revolve around environmental, social, and philosophical issues.

My science self continues to explore how the world works, while my writer self explores “what if?” My current work-in-progress, a speculative fiction novel, imagines a world in which an alternative course of evolution has unfolded. In this world, one’s socioeconomic class is defined by one’s reproductive biology, and tensions are beginning to rise over the status quo. Stay tuned.