A child of multi-racial Brooklyn and Queens, I write about people with small lives striving toward outsized dreams. My characters live strong ethnic identities whether Italian American, Latinx, Southern Evangelical or Arab American. I chronicle women's lives and the almost unbearable tension between their public and private selves. My family lived through World War II in Northern Italy, and female wartime heroism, PTSD, and the effects of war on subsequent generations are also important themes. My language is the found poetry of people's everyday speech heightened by spiritual yearning.