I am a literary writer, which means I am as interested in the resonance and flexibility of language, as I am in the power of our culture and our stories.
Writing is my second career, or third, depending on how you count. When I published The Good Negress, in 1995, I had been working as a statistician, and writing every morning, starting at 4. Toni Morrison has said she was smarter in the early morning. For myself, the quiet at that power hour makes room for all the creativity, and writing before the day starts to demand--well, that just soothes my soul. Our ideas are not constrained by efficiency (or mundanity), that early in the day. I have been a writer and a working mother for the last twenty-five years. For work, I teach creative writing. I teach undergraduates at Morgan State University in Baltimore, and I teach graduate students at the low-residency MFA program at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA. The Good Negress has been continuously in print for twenty-five years, which is rare. The Good Negress is taught at the university level, which is exciting.