Odd fact: I'm a good driver, but I've nearly run over Sylvester Stallone and Tom Cruise, not at the same time. Both are very short.

Another odd fact: I was born in Missoula, Montana, a birthplace I share with David Lynch, Dana Carvey, and Jesse Tyler Ferguson.

My short stories have appeared in Agni, The Portland Review, Happy, The Literary Review, Kenyon Review, and Gulf Stream.

My story Passage was reprinted in the Ohio University Press anthology New Stories From The Southwest. Cake, originally published in Kenyon Review, appeared in the 2008 Best American Nonrequired Reading anthology, edited by McSweeney’s publisher Dave Eggers.

My essay 14 ½ Things To Do In Stockholm In The Dead Of Winter won best creative nonfiction and appeared in the fall 2004 issue of the Canadian literary journal Grain. The piece was later a finalist for a Canadian National Magazine Award. My essay Reunion won Prism International’s 2006 creative nonfiction contest. I've also had nonfiction pieces in New Delta Review and The Florida Review.

I wrote the award-winning film No Easy Way, which starred the fabulous Khandi Alexander.

I also co-wrote a cat humor book called Petted By The Light that is no longer in print and that you used to be able to buy for a penny on Amazon.

I started writing because one Thanksgiving our local grocery store had a poetry contest for kids. I don't think there was an actual prize - other than the acclaim and recognition of Buttrey's Grocery. The whole creative "process" was difficult because there are hardly any words that rhyme with Turkey and Pilgrim (and, at age 9, I became grimly aware of the fact that writing is, overall, a fucking pain in the ass). Anyway, I came in 3rd and they put my poem above the deli section. It was intoxicating – not the fame part, just the fact that my work was being read. Of course that sounds like bullshit, as it always does coming out of the mouths of writers, especially famous ones (which I'm not), but I like to think it was true.