A Hoosier (Indiana) native, I spent part of my upbringing in Japan before completing my education in the Midwest. I have been working in psychiatry for over 15 years in Seattle, where I maintain a private practice.

Fiction writing stemmed from my desire for a creative outlet and my love of books. After writing thousands of pages of medical notes, I shifted to storytelling and translating my personality to my main character’s voice.

I am editing my upmarket women’s fiction, What She Doesn’t Have, with domestic suspense elements. It features core themes of envy of what other women have, along with recovering from grief, while also addressing female friendships, motherhood, and navigating marital tension. I will soon seek representation for my novel. My next book will be suspense, written with an irreverent tone.

As a member of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association, I have partnered with amazing women authors, including in workshops and a critique group, and have attended multiple classes through Hugo House, an independent writing center in Seattle. I’m also a member of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP).

Though I write fiction, I also draw inspiration from the prose of nonfiction and memoir, including Thomas Fuller’s The Boys of Riverside: A Deaf Football Team and a Quest for Glory and Elizabeth Miki Brina’s Speak, Okinawa. Some of my favorite fiction from the last several years includes Amanda Churchill’s The Turtle House, Rachel Hawkins’s The Villa, Clare Leslie Hall’s Broken Country, and Garth Greenwell’s Small Rain.

A graduate of Indiana University and the University of Michigan Medical School, I am a board-certified child and adult psychiatrist. I live in Seattle, WA with my family, including two boisterous boys, for whom I keep resisting getting a dog. “Not until we are done traveling!”