I could tell you that I’m a professional writer, but that wouldn’t fully explain my passion for words. As a kid, growing up in Pensacola, Florida, I was fascinated with putting words together. I loved it all—spelling, grammar, reading and writing. Words were magic, and they took the shy little girl that I was to amazing places. They were the building blocks of stories, and stories were my first and most loyal friends. Stories lulled me to sleep every night. Stories were waiting just for me at the library. Stories were the key to understanding my nutty Southern family tree. 

After graduating high school, I enrolled at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where I wrote news and feature stories for The Daily Tar Heel, edited book jacket copy at the University of North Carolina Press and ultimately earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism. My first reporting job was covering crime for a daily paper in the rural town of Kinston, North Carolina, where the tang of freshly cured tobacco in the air could knock you flat. Over the next 25 years, I worked in newsrooms across North Carolina, Virginia and Florida, writing about state and local government, education, crime, public health and more hurricanes than I care to remember. In the fall of 2016, I left the newsroom and transitioned to full-time freelancing. 

Today I’m still hooked on words, and I’ve found that I’m at my personal and professional best when helping people and organizations develop their best messages and share their stories with the world. In my free time, I like to take photos, read, spend time with family and friends and travel almost anywhere. Get in touch—and let’s start writing!