I am an American Literature and Creative Writing student at a small midwestern university. Subjects of special interest, therefore, are American Literature and Creative Writing, but I am also fluent in Literary Criticism, Photography, Sustainable Agriculture, Pets, Music & Film, and Children's Literature. My emphasis has been and continues to be on the writers of the Great Plains - Willa Cather, Mari Sandoz, Weldon Kees, even that knuckle-head Hemingway guy from the Kansas City newspaper (wonder whatever happened to him?) - writers who have been distinctly undercredited for their contributions to the canon of American Lit.

My passion is ...

Story

I know too much about ...

food

My parents always told me ...

to go to bed

My childhood ambition ...

was to become a veterinarian

My favorite memory ...

is of my dog, Wesley.

Why I write ...

because I have to.

What I am reading/watching/listening to ...

Breakfast of Champions - Vonnegut; Twilight - Stephanie Meyer; "We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank" - Modest Mouse; playing "Boomshine" on emuse - addicting!

My first job ...

Soda jerk!

My best moment ...

will be graduating from college FINALLY!

My inspiration ...

is to make my dad proud of me. . . FINALLY!

Arts & Humanities > Fantasy & Science Fiction Book previews: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by J.K. Rowling

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The hype surrounding the arrival of a new Harry Potter book always put my guard up. Anything so commercially successful, says my inner struggling artist, must be a sell-out, less-than-worthy of my attention (and dollars). But I have to admit that Harry Potter has won me over. Like so many writers and literati, I want to find a reason to dislike J.K. Rowling and her imagi-spawn, Harry, Ron, Hermione, et al.

But I can't. There is something so lifelike and so . . . so damn normal about these characters that I cannot help rooting for them, cannot help wanting to know how their lives turn out...

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