I am a writer, reader, and teacher. I’ve been an animal lover for as long as I can remember. I have felt at home in the company of animals. And certain dogs and cats have affected me in long-lasting and surprising ways.

I have published two books of poetry, Your Skin Is a Country and Proofreading the Histories, with Alice James Books. I love poems for the way they can transform something ordinary into something unfamiliar, even wondrous. Often, reading poems makes the world bigger, stranger, and more interesting. I find Human-Animal Studies to be like this: the ordinary—a dog, a cat, a simple interaction with an animal—becomes stranger and more interesting than I ever realized. New awareness enriches my everyday experience.

I have a Ph.D. in American and English literature from Brandeis University, though my work also led me to research American Studies—history, politics, and cultural studies—in addition to literature. This background doesn’t have an obvious bridge to Human-Animal Studies but, in fact, literary scholars, historians, art historians, and cultural scholars are all active in the field, along with scientists, philosophers, and social scientists. Like others, I found my way to the field later in my career.

Graduate school nurtured my curiosity and taught me how to research. I was one of those students who had to stop myself from continuing to research a topic because there was always so much more to discover and too few hours. Many people experience graduate school as a slog (it could be), but I saw it as an opportunity to do things I love: to read, learn, and write. Now, learning and writing about Human-Animal Studies is a bit like going back to school, only I get to choose all my courses and there are no grades. This site exists because of the sheer wonder and joy of discovery.

I’ve been teaching for over 30 years. Currently, I teach writing and communication to first-year students at Champlain College in Burlington, VT, and have since 2016. I have also worked at Goddard College, where I ran the MFA in Creative Writing Program for six years before shifting to full-time classroom teaching, and then at Burlington College, where I taught, headed a department, and led a redesign of the core curriculum. I have taught a wide array of courses—expository writing, creative writing (memoir, short fiction, and poetry), American literature, Shakespeare, American Studies, and somewhat regularly a course called “Pets and People.”

I have called Vermont home since 1991, where I live with my wife Emily. We’ve had both dogs and cats over the years (some appear on the Home Page). Right now, we are between cats, have a dog named Zola, a flower garden that’s a bit too stuffed to weed well, and, in the winter, a driveway, porches, stairs, and a dog path in the yard that are a bit exhausting to shovel.