BIO      

My work is both Catholic and catholic, which is to say universal, all-inclusive: a thirst for communion, a pondering of the questions: Why are we here? Where did we come from? Where are we going?

Someone once asked me, "How could you become a Catholic in L.A.?" My answer is "How could you not become a Catholic in L.A.?" What better backdrop for reflection than the paradoxes of wealth and the poverty, beauty and broken dreams, the power and the glory of the City of Angels? What better place for the maddening, every-absorbing task of making my way as a human being and a writer than this fractured city of nine million other shining souls?

I'm a graduate of the University of New Hampshire and Suffolk Law School. Born and raised on the New Hampshire seacoast, I did a 10-year stint in Boston and moved to L.A. in 1990. Following a disastrous 4-year run as a Beverly Hills attorney, I quit my job, converted to Catholicism, and began writing. My commentaries have been aired on NPR's "All Things Considered"; my essays published, among other places, in The Los Angeles Times Magaizne, The Utne Reader, Commonweal, Notre Dame Magazine, Portland Magazine, and The Sun; and my work anthologized in the Best Spiritual Writing series 2002, 2005, and 2008. (click on dates for links).

I've received fellowships from the Djerassi Foundation, the Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, and the Ucross Foundation, and am a communicant at St. Basil's and St. Thomas the Apostle chruches in Koreatown, L.A.