Hi!  I'm a transplanted kiwi (New Zealander) teaching English at Pittsburg State University in Kansas.  Married (to Gil, a communication prof and all round wonderful guy), with two elementary aged children (about whom I could go on, and on, so won't begin).  Published academically (my second book, Bluebeard in the English Tradition: A Reader's Guide) is out in July 2009 from University Press of Mississippi), I also write kid lit (picture books, chapter books, middle grade fiction and young adult lit).

Academics

My BA (English and French) and BA Hons (English) are from Massey University, New Zealand.  My MA and PhD in English are from the University of Toronto.  My dissertation work at U of T was on the Bluebeard fairy tale (the serial wife murderer... hard to believe he was actually a nursery staple until the turn of the twentieth century!), specifically as rewritten by feminist writers.  It was published as Reading Feminist Intertextuality Through Bluebeard Stories (Mellen, 2001) in a now-ridiculously-expensive and hard-to-find limited library hard cover cloth print run.  But every now and then I peek at which libraries around the world have it collecting dust on their shelves!

While in grad school I published explications of both The Great Gatsby, and All Quiet on the Western Front for Gale Research.  I also published some poems.  They were very spare; I was aiming for a space vacuum for some angst-ridden reason.  I still like "Scheherezade is saying" which goes around in a permanent loop, but that's about it!  My proud U of T achievements include: publishing an article I had polished over years and years on The Great Gatsby as a rewriting of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde (Modern Fiction Studies; apparently Fitzgerald did get something from his education after all!) and winning the prestigious Woodhouse Prize for best dissertation submitted to the English department in 1997.

As a university English professor I've published articles on the Canadian short story (U of T Quarterly), Northanger Abbey as haunted by presupposition (Papers on Language and Literature), Bluebeard as not-a-pirate (International Journal of the Humanities), and early English translations of Charles Perrault's "Bluebeard" (U of T Quarterly).  My Gatsby article got reprinted in Modern Critical Interpretations: The Great Gatsby in 2003.

I spent six years researching and writing my second academic book, and I'm very proud of it! Bluebeard: A Reader's Guide to the English Tradition (UP Mississippi, 2009).  

Kidlit

I have been drawn to children's writing for a long time, writing as a youngster and then drafting a picture book text in college.  During the final two years of work on the recent Bluebeard book I bought up books in writing for children's markets, but figured they had to wait until the Bluebeard book got finished.  Between teaching full time, writing Bluebeard, and mothering two young children, my hands were pretty full already!

I took about a month off after final editing and indexing of Bluebeard.  And when I felt I'd had a wee rest, I launched into exploring the world of writing for children.  And I don't think I could take any more time off from this endeavor if I tried!  I have drafted picture books, several chapter books, emerging readers, and magazine pieces both fiction and non-.  I have latterly written poetry for kids and explored some rebus writing.  I like all of it, and I like being able to move back and forth among the various types of writing.  They all have such different types of rigor and all are fascinating to delve into and explore.

I have completed a Middle Grade novel, and am now drafting a YA novel. For both of these, I have had to do quite a bit of research.

So research and writing, the two things I enjoy, have come together in children's literature, a genre that demands a high level of craft and persistence!