Either write something worth reading, or do something worth writing about —(Ben Franklin, who likely stole from someone else…no matter). They are words I try to live by. Besides my life as a writer and professor, I live with my partner on fifteen acres in rural Indiana next door to my parents, on a homestead designed to be energy-efficient (we continue to modify an existing house and barn). We try to live a sustainable life with solar power, gardening, worm composting, a native grass and wildflower field, my parents’ bees, and a small flock of chickens (more below on our impossible project).

I write poetry, essays, and flash fiction about science. I have an MFA in Poetry and a BS in Physics (you can read about my journey from physics to poetry here, in “An Ocean of Instance, an Ocean of Law”).

I design and teach courses on the intersection of science and art. Currently, I teach a year-long seminar at Butler University, “Physics and the Arts,” where we look at how physics ideas are enacted in fiction, poetry, drama, graphic novels, visual art, and dance. The first class I designed on science and art was for the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth (Writing Workshop: Where Art Meets Science) in 2000. That summer course expanded into two online courses (one nonfiction and one literature) for the CTY Distance Education Program that continue today, though I no longer teach them. I have taught my science poetry curriculum in Saudi Arabia and China, both for the Center for Excellence in Education’s Research Science Institute (RSI). I also teach and design courses for summer programs, libraries, and offer courses through the Indiana Writers Center.

Another evolving part of my life is a commitment to social justice—fighting racism, sexism, classism, and all guises of xenophobia that persist here in the US. I speak at book clubs and Roundtables, and I use my platform as an educator to amplify marginalized voices, raise awareness, and have difficult discussions about how to move forward. This is an ongoing challenge as I learn the ways that I benefit from structural racism and confront my own biases.

Our Story

The story of our move here is scattered on various blog posts and essays, and it continues to unfold. We moved here from the Sonoran Desert, I spent some of my childhood in the Mojave, and the desert will always be home to me. But at age 35, we decided to move to the Midwest and try a life of more manual labor (he still has his city job and works from home, but he helps; with my teaching, I consider myself a part-time homesteader). Our house had plenty of work to do; despite the dream of creating a self-contained mini-ecosystem, I have had to truck in over 100 tons of topsoil just to compensate from some of the neglect. Here, I describe some of the clean-up and attempt to establish prairie on agricultural land.

With hefty insulation, geothermal heating and cooling, solar panels, a metal roof and an electric car, we are able to achieve something close to a yearly “net zero” with our energy use. There is plenty to unpack there, and ultimately it’s just not true: we travel by plane, we breathe, we live in a culture with the absurd notion of “disposable plastics”:: I am as complicit as anyone with a comfortable life in a rich nation. But the ever-unattainable goal, the project, is to approach a lifestyle that is consistent with my values as possible. The journey can be disheartening, but any small gift of hope encourages me to keep on.