Words have enthralled me from an early age. As a toddler, I would stand in my crib and touch the colorful alphabet letters on the wallpaper. Once I learned to read, many a happy hour was spent in the company of my Little Golden Books.

At age 10, I scored my first byline: a poem published in Scholastic’s Golden Magazine for Boys and Girls. The rhymes were clumsy, but earnest. Fast forward to college, where I dove into the study of languages and world literature, everything from Shakespeare to Garcia Marquez. My love for words flowered into a passion.

My first job out of college, in the early ’80s, was on the editorial staff of The Mother Earth News. We were a bunch of hippies cranking out a bimonthly magazine about homesteading, and our circulation was an astounding 1-million subscribers. Later I landed at the St. Petersburg Times (now Tampa Bay Times), Florida’s largest newspaper. I was there for 20 years, writing feature stories that were syndicated in newspapers nationwide and won awards including First Place in Feature Writing from the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. What a fun job that was.

In the literary world, my writing has been published in several journals, won a flash contest for creative nonfiction in Hippocampus magazine, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and earned me a residency from the Emrys Foundation for the Arts.

Over the last decade, I’ve worn two hats: author and psychotherapist. Still listening to people’s stories … still musing on the human experience … still in love with words.