Let me guess. You're here because you were browsing the Red Room author list and you saw my name and thought "never heard of her, who is she?"--or else you tried to click on Norman Mailer and you missed. Oh well. Welcome, stranger.

To answer your question: I am an author whose publication history, as of six months ago, consisted of one sonnet about flossing (yes teeth), which appeared in the newsletter of a dental practice in New Jersey circa 1996. (I can't remember the good doctor's name, and my only copy of the newsletter arrived in a plastic baggie with apologies from the US Postal Service--missing the page on which my sonnet actually appeared--so I don't even have archival evidence. Definitely out of print now, I should think. But for three beers, I will recite it for you.)

Lately, I have had a little success with the publication of my essay "Pursuing the Great Bad Novelist" in the Fall 2007 issue of The Georgia Review. This essay will be anthologized in Best Creative Nonfiction, Vol. 2, edited by Lee Gutkind (W.W.Norton, July 2008), and has been nominated for a National Magazine Award.

In spite of this, I have still struggled to say, when asked what I do, "I am an author." I usually say, "I am a high school teacher... and I write." The title "author" feels a bit presumptuous for someone of my obscurity. One well-received essay doesn't seem like enough.

And yet, I received an email from the administrators of Red Room, in response to my humble supplications, saying "Your Author Status Has Been Granted." Moreover, they granted me a little slice of server space, somewhere between T.C. Boyle and Jane Smiley, and invited me to make myself at home. So, gratefully, here I am. My Author Status Has Been Granted. I hope to have news of many more literary successes in the months and years to come, to prove myself worthy of the designation.