I direct the creative writing department at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida. Teaching is one of my great loves, and our program attracts young writers from all over the country. We teach poetic and narrative craft and prosody and cultivate excitement in our students, allowing our apprentice artists to explore all manner of subject matter and form. We have a thriving artistic community on campus, hosting writers like Billy Collins, Mark Jarman, Tim Seibles, Paul Lisicky, Christopher Buckley, Amina Gautier, Rosalynde Vas Dias, and Jennifer Key. I have a master's in creative writing from the University of South Carolina, whre I studied with the poet James Dickey. I have published three books, Crucial Beauty (SCOP Publications, 1991), Wayward Passages (Black Bay Books, 2006), and Rebel: The American Iliad (Adelaide Books, 2021).