Consulting

Teaching & Writing & Grant Writing Experience

Learning with others in community is at the core of my life’s work and pedagogy. I have been an educator for over twenty years in the Twin Cities; I’ve taught creative writing, literature, Asian American studies, and college writing at the University of Minnesota, Macalester College, St. Catherine University, Hamline University, Kundiman, Metro State University, North Hennepin Community College. I’ve taught individual workshops with many literary organizations and community groups such as Writing the Wild, Palette Poetry, Northwoods Writers Conference, North Shore Readers & Writers Festival, the Korean Literary Society of Washington, and more. I was full-time English faculty at the Perpich Center for Arts Education, a public school and Minnesota State Agency, for fifteen years. Currently I teach regularly with the Minnesota Prison Writing Program and in the Year-Long Creative Nonfiction Program at the Loft Literary Center. In fall 2026 and spring 2027, I will be the Dayton Hudson Visiting Writer at Carleton College. 

I write for adults and for children and am the author of eleven traditionally published books, with two forthcoming in 2027 and 2028. I am represented by a literary agent and a speaking agent and have enjoyed worked with several publishers and editors, and appreciate how much unseen care, labor, resilience, and collective investment it takes to sustain a thoughtful, vibrant, risk-taking, inclusive literary culture locally and nationally. 

As a consultant/teacher, I enjoy helping fellow writers at any stage of their practice or career navigate next steps. I can help clients, students, mentees, and the general better understand today’s publishing landscape and what we are facing in terms of literacy, book reading, and arts engagement. I believe deeply in the role of journalism in a functioning democracy and I have been the editor of the Twin Cities Daily Planet and have written for the StarTribune and Minnesota Public Radio’s The Current: Rewind podcast series, Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, the Minnesota Women’s Press, Rain Taxi Review of Books, and ExperienceLife. In 2017, I co-founded Poetry Asylum, a small community organization, with poet Su Hwang and previously co-directed a micropress with poet Rachel Moritz. I have had creative work published in many anthologies, journals, magazines, and place-based art installations; given many readings and lectures; and served on several community non-profit and government boards. 

I currently serve on the Editorial Board of Black Lawrence Press’s Immigrant Writing Series. In 2026, I received the Kay Sexton Award which recognizes an individual or organization for longstanding dedication and outstanding work in fostering books, reading and literary activity in Minnesota. As an individual artist I have been awarded two McKnight Foundation Artist Awards, an Archibald Bush Foundation Fellowship, multiple Minnesota State Arts Board grants. I have served on several grant review panels including the literary organization grant program the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as a judge of poetry book contests and poetry book awards. I regularly support other artists navigate grant applications and their next career steps in my role as an Artist Career Consultant at Springboard for the Arts. 

Education & Training

In addition to holding an MFA in Creative Writing from Naropa University, a Master in Teaching from University of St. Thomas, and a BA in English from Macalester College, I have received community-based facilitation and conflict resolution training from the YWCA Racial Justice Facilitation Program, the Minnesota Peacebuilding Institute, Education Minnesota, and elsewhere. Thanks to a community-funded healing justice project, I am also trained in biodynamic craniosacral therapy and since 2018 have had a community-based bodywork practice in South Minneapolis.