Quote

My parents, grandmother and brother were teachers. My mother taught Latin and French and was the school librarian. My father taught geography and a popular class called Family Living, the precursor to Sociology, which he eventually taught. My grandmother was a beloved one-room school teacher at Knob School, near Sonora in Larue County, Ky.

I live in Cullowhee, North Carolina. That's where I teach, at Western Carolina University. That region is where my family has lived for a long time and that region is my landscape.

I taught English, first at a Catholic school and then at El Toro High School in Lake Forest, Calif.

I live mostly in New York, but I teach in both New York and L.A.

It started 25 years ago, when I was teaching elementary school in a small town in Missouri.

I was a Presbyterian minister at a small church in Omaha, Nebraska.

My mother was born in Baltimore, and before her marriage, she was an artist and teacher of art.