I've been writing since before I could write: at age four, I dictated stories to my mother and my aunts, and they typed them up and stapled them together. That was my first book. Later I wrote plays. Then poetry. And now I'm publishing prose and photography.Since 2012, I have published nineteen books. Most are collections of essays about France, where I lived for twenty years. I have also published non-fiction books about Florida, Saudi Arabia and the island kingdom of Bahrain as well as six albums of color photography. In addition to my collected poetry, I co-edited and published the complete works of the late American poet Ralph L. Kinsey.I was born and raised in Ashland, Kentucky, was admitted to the Honors Program at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and specialized in English, French, Spanish and political science. I was awarded two Hopwood creative writing awards in drama. The recipient of a Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship, I attended graduate school at Stanford University and studied at St. Lawrence University under a National Defense Education Act scholarship.