About

My wife, Jenna, and I raised our blended family of five children on five acres in Pickett, Wisconsin, where we tend an orchard of over twenty fruiting trees and bushes (apples, peaches, currants, and blueberries), several large vegetable and flower gardens, and a lovely flock of laying hens.  Our children and four grandchildren are now freshly rooted in other places, in Michigan, Wisconsin, Utah, and Colorado. 

My fiction and essays have appeared in a wide variety of journals and magazines, and I’ve published three collections of short stories and a novel.  I am delighted to announce that St. Martin’s Press will publish my new novel, Life, and Death, and Giants, in Fall, 2025.  Ordering information and early reactions to this novel appear here. In addition, elsewhere on this site, you can find information about my previous books, and you can read a few stories and essays published in online journals.

Following three years of teaching at Birmingham-Southern College in Birmingham, Alabama, I returned to Wisconsin as a professor of American Literature, Nature Writing, and Fiction writing at the University of Wisconsin in Oshkosh.  

I love the work I do at UW Oshkosh, where I’ve been a professor of American Literature, Nature Writing, and Fiction Writing since 1992.  I enjoy the company of my students, and I treasure the opportunity to introduce them to the literature that has enriched my life for a half-century.