I've been struggling with creating a bio for Rattle, who accepted my poem in November and is getting quite antsy to receive it. (whines) But it's hard! They didn't want a traditional bio, but something more about why I write. So I finally came up with this:

I have been a writer since kindergarten, when I wrote illustrated tales of shapeless purple monsters eating everyone and then crying. My themes haven’t changed much since then. I came to poetry after writing fiction for many years – I eventually came to dislike the awkwardness of “plots” and how false they seemed. Poetry seems to claim a lot less than fiction, and question more and in a way, leave more space in the universe. I read once in a Zen magazine that poetry is about “the space around it” – the white page between line breaks, the gap between the poem and the bottom of the page – and I think my writing tries to make peace with the space, use it in a way that gives the reader an opportunity to pause and make their own way, whatever that means.