I was born and raised in rural Kentucky, a town so small not even the gas pump could stay in business. It was a world of farmers, tobacco patches, seas of corn, ground hogs, broken down tractors, poverty, and abandonment. Much of my creative writing explores what it means to be from that place and what it means to have left it and always be returning. It's like what Flannery O'Connor said: If you survive your childhood, you have a life time of material to write about. 

When I graduated from high school in 2007, I wasn't someone who liked school and teachers, let alone reading or writing. The last thing I said to my English teacher at the end of senior year was, "Thank God I never have to read another book!" (Yes, the teacher smote me for my insolence.)

But my attitude toward learning and school transformed during my first term at Blue Ridge Community College in Martinsburg, West Virginia in 2008. My first class--English 101--changed my life. I went on to major in English and minor in History at Shepherd University and then study literature and social justice at Lehigh University. Now I'm a writing teacher.