Essayist and editor. Former editor of Fourth Genre, an award-winning journal of literary nonfiction. For many years, professor at Michigan State University, teaching writing, editing, nonfiction. Director of the Professional Writing Program. Serving now as chaplain at the hospital formerly known as Mercy. Living with her spouse, the writer Kate Carroll de Gutes, in Iowa City in a house built in 1893, with a dirt alley behind it and where once a barred owl lived in an old swamp maple.