Artist, poet, essayist, and memoirist, living in Northern California. Retired firefighter and E.R. Paramedic. I've published essays and poetry but this memoir is my first full-length book.

Writing memoir is different from any kind of writing I've done before. Writing memoir is life-challenging and life-changing. The remembering is just the beginning of it, the easier part. Writing it down is much more powerful and soul-shaking. With remembering, your thoughts can shift and dart away elsewhere whenever things get ugly or painful or dangerous. But when you make the commitment to tell the truth and write it down, you have to GO THERE. You have to BE there again, and experience it again. Sometimes it's even more painful now, because you can see more now than you were able to see then. You can't not-see, and you can't run away. When you write it, you are really in it.

Inchworms, Celebrating the small joys, wonders, and perplexities of life. Stories
Promises, Listening To The Inner Counselor. Channeled verses.
From Here Until Forever, New Thought Essays.
One Hundred New Thought Essays, www.DarkhorsePress.com
A Space Between Rains. Poetry collection

Anthologies: Berkeley Poets’ Cooperative Quarterly, poem:The First of June
Poetry Life & Times: eight poems and interview by Sara Russell, about 2007. (All poetry from that period has been removed by a new editor.)
Milvia Street Journal, poem: Keego Harbor

Currently working on a book-length more-than-a-memoir nonfiction narrative titled: Victory Is My Name, about unlearning the untruths we were taught as children that hold us emotional hostage until we find our own way to the truth.

Technical writing: Disaster First Aid-What To Do When 911 Can't Come (a course for citizens/volunteers with handbook, Instructor-Kit of teaching materials, and 80-slide teaching presentation. (Has e-commerce website, if interested: http://www.disasterfirstaid.com)

Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi)
Writer-Coach Connection (Young-writer mentoring for Berkeley and Oakland California middle schools and high schools.)

ERetired from previous careers in graphic art, Fire Service, and Hospital Emergency Room Paramedic caregiver.

North Berkeley Writers
Writer To Writer
She Writes
Berkeley City College
California Writers' Association, Berkeley Chapter