I am a freelance features journalist based in South Portland, Maine, which is just over the bridge from Portland's West End, where I grew up in the loving chaos of my grandparents' Polish and Lithuanian clan.
Before settling into my current lifestyle of home-office hermitting, I worked as the managing editor of the business magazine Mainebiz, the staff writer of the alt-weekly The Portland Phoenix, and at the start of it all, when I was 15 years old, the perpetually wide-eyed intern of the iconic alt-rag The Casco Bay Weekly, may it rest in peace.
In 2011, I received an M.F.A. in fiction from the University of Miami, where I was a James Michener Fellow in Creative Writing. These days, I am a contributing editor at Down East and Yankee magazines specializing in artist profiles and the relationship between humans and their DIY home decor, that latter of which is, I've found, a fascinating window into how people envision security, serenity, and beauty.
It is an honor to have a job where I get to meet so many fascinating and earnest people who invite me to their homes, studios, barns, offices, zip lines, saunas, river perches, treehouses, and backyard gourd sanctuaries. They inspire me every day to look at the world anew, and I am eternally grateful for the chance to tell their stories.