Welcome! I am a writer, editor, and college lecturer based in New England. I explore people’s relationship to their landscapes. I hope you will stay here a while and get to know my work.

My wilderness memoir Going Over the Mountain traces my evolution as a mountain trekker. I followed others. I tried to teach my daughters resilience. I went alone. I came back to community. It came out in September 2023 from Appalachian Mountain Club Books. Order one direct from the publisher here.

My next book explores my farmer ancesters in New Jersey. My grandfather decided he didn’t want to be a farmer and at age 18 with a new wife and baby on teh way he left the Bridgeton, New Jersey area, never to live there again, changing the trajectory of his children and grandchildren. While rsearching this amazing story, I wrote a chapter about smalltime farmers and how they dealt with the industrial agriculture that took over starting int he mid-1800s for a book coming out soon from Rutgers University Press.

I am the editor-in-chief of  Appalachia journal (submit button at the bottom of the page). 

I teach journalism history at the University of Connecticut.

Libertarians on the Prairie tells how a secret collaboration on the Little House books reshaped the nineteenth-century American frontier story into a series of heroic tales that rebutted the policies of the New Deal. Libertarians on the Prairie is available in hardback and a paperback edition with a Foreword by Stephen Heuser.  Order one today.

Going back in time a bit: I appeared in Don Bernier’s 2005 film, “In a Nutshell,” about a brilliant, eccentric artist who found herself homeless in her 90s. A clip here.