My road to writing wasn’t always clear and direct. I began as a boy, telling stories, although my mother might have said it was telling lies. I was only seven when my beloved grandfather passed. The world quickly became an unsafe and threatening place—partly because my grandfather’s absence left me feeling unprotected, and partly as a result of a very real and tangible episode of abuse I suffered shortly after his death. I retreated from reality on occasion, and used writing to create a world that was very different from my own—to make me feel safe and to suppress the truth.

My first official venture into writing occurred when I was just eight. My fourth-grade teacher Mrs. Beatrice Wright (I remember her well) asked me to participate in a poetry contest sponsored by the Red Cross. Students of all age groups living in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area were invited to write a poem about the American flag. My poem, “The Flag I Love,” placed third out of all the entries. The seed was planted.

Though I didn’t recognize at the time why I wrote, clearly my poetry served to make sense out of the chaos in my life. In time, poetry gave way to what I called performance prose. That led to short stories that quickly morphed into longer works. Now, every attempt at a short story inevitably leads me to the realization that there’s a novel in there somewhere.

I hold two master’s degrees: one in Writing from Johns Hopkins University and the other in Creative Writing from Fairleigh Dickinson University. Howard University awarded me a Frederick Douglass Doctoral Scholars fellowship to pursue a Ph.D. in English, though sadly, my mother’s illness necessitated my withdrawal from the program.

I seek out and attend workshops and events that support my continued growth as a writer. Among them, the Sewanee Writers Conference where I was fortunate to work alongside novelist Francine Prose; the Hurston/Wright Foundation’s writers workshop, where I collaborated with writer Jeffrey Renard Allen; and the Iowa Summer Writing Festival.

As a certified Amherst Writers & Artists leader, I conduct writing workshops and help others express their unique voice through writing. I also serve as an assistant editor for Narrative, an online library and resource dedicated to advancing literature around the globe. Twice I was awarded grants from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and twice I put the monies to good writing use.

A literary highlight includes being part of Oprah Winfrey’s book club discussion of Ernest J. Gaines’s A Lesson Before Dying. My stories have been published in The Johns Hopkins University’s Penn-Union journal and DC’s Metro Weekly publication. Most recently, a chapter from my yet-to-be-published novel The Shelf Life of Secrets is anthologized in Stress City: A Big Book of Fiction by 51 DC Guys.  

I continue work on The Shelf Life of Secrets and have also begun a memoir, title to be determined. Stay tuned.

I am passionate about writing—my own and that of others. If you feel my education or experience can help and inspire you in any way, feel free to drop me a line.