What brought me to this and people who matter…

Some History
I caught the writing bug at a young age (maybe 8 or 9) and it has ebbed and flowed in my life ever since.

Choosing to get a little more serious in high school, I elected to take Creative Writing I and II under the direction of Mr. Richard Gilbert in my junior and senior years respectively. I also spent a year as co-editor of the North Penn High School literary magazine but didn't really get my feet wet with the business of writing until I hit college in the early 1990's.

At Montgomery County Community College, I managed to get swept up into the MCCC Writers' Club quite by accident where over two years I held office, lead critique meetings and co-chaired a three-day writers' conference. I took a poetry class after transferring to Ursinus College but my main writing community remained at Montco. (Some habits die hard and I fully admit to missing that group today.)

While sitting in a stew of frustration and profound clarity in May 1995, The Rogue Nun was born. Originally a space to rant, research, and keep my mind from going to mush, The Rogue Nun has had more than her fair share of incarnations - going from a "friends and family" newsletter to an internationally circulated connection for poetry and spiritual expression to a very modest web page and finally arriving at the more personal blog-spot it is today. There have been large gaps of silence between versions but "she" has never really fallen too far to the back of my cranium. The title "The Rogue Nun" came as an instantaneous epiphany at the time and fit, very nicely, the description of the young woman I was that fateful day: unemployed, in serious debt (thanks to a college education), a bit cynical, very restless, and devoted to finding out who the person in the mirror was exactly. And so, the quest continues…

Acknowledgments
I want to thank all of my family (my father’s voracious appetite for reading and my mother’s bottomless encouragement especially), my friends who have always supported me (you know who you are), Mr. Richard Gilbert (who gave me the courage to break the rules of writing when they needed to be broken and let me actually speak to what I was feeling), Mrs. Patricia Nestler (who, while never an actual professor of mine, taught me more about my own abilities of writing, editing, and mentoring than anyone else by simply giving me a stage on which to experiment and the confidence to stretch), and last but certainly not least, I want to thank Greg Huber – my partner in life and love who constantly encourages me to keep writing while plugging away at his own work. He and I began our writing relationship when I was but a budding poet sharing ideas and authors and now, so many twists in the plot later, we still sit for hours over stories of our own and others. Thank you. I am more than grateful to you all.

A Promise Kept

  Post-it® Poem from April 30th on a 3x3 note. And that's it for this year! :) Thanks for following along...