I am from Appalachia and Alaska – two landscapes separated geographically by mountains and politicized by the mineral wealth that landscape holds. They are places of sharp contrasts—poverty and wealth, good people in bad circumstances, magnificent landscapes devastated by strip mining, oil spills and climate change. My heart lives somewhere between these two homes and inform my work as I create landscapes that reflect the claustrophobic (Appalachian plays) and expansive (Alaska plays). Like me, the characters live in conflict between cultures, identity, and ideas that spring from the place in which they live. They are the forgotten, the freaks, the scarred, who face unimaginable hardships with heart and humor.