I like writing that aims to engage, entertain, and make a difference. I am passionate about social justice and working with others to make change. I’ve done this in my professional life as a social worker, working with individuals, couples and families, and working with communities in the field of AIDS and health care as a human right. And, I like to find a way to make an audience laugh or smile while immersed in weighty topics.
Though I grew up in the South, I was not of the South; rather, as a military child I became a keen observer of Southern ways and charms without the burden of having to defend what was never mine. Meridian, Mississippi was my mother’s hometown. I spent every summer of my youth in Meridian and continued to visit family there as an adult. My family's racism confused, confounded and infuriated me from a young age, and learning how to be anti-racist is the work of my life. I still cannot decide if I should call myself a Southern writer.