I'm Trick Dog Trainer, the co-host of the podcast This Animal Life, and the author two books, the memoir, For the Love of a Dog, (Harmony Books), and the novel, Body Sharers (Rutgers University Press). Body Sharers placed among the finalists for the PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award for Best First Novel. Recent honors include finalist for the 2017 Frank McCourt Memoir Prize, winner of the 2016 Briar Cliff Review Nonfiction Award, winner of the 2013 Florida Review Editor’s Award, and a Best American Essays 2015 Notable Essay. I teach creative writing and dog training in Tampa Bay.
Because we can’t escape our ancient hunger to live close to nature, we encircle the house with lawns and gardens, install picture windows, adopt pets and Boston ferns, and scent everything that touches our lives. –Diane Ackerman
“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.”
― Audre Lorde
“No black woman writer in this culture can write ‘too much’. Indeed, no woman writer can write ‘too much’…No woman has ever written enough”
― bell hooks
We take our stand on the solidarity of humanity, the oneness of life, and the unnaturalness and injustice of all special favoritism, whether of sex, race, country, or condition. If one link of the chain is broken, the chain is broken.” – Anna Julia Cooper
Discomfort has always been a necessary part of enlightenment. — Pearl Cleage
“Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people. But stories can also repair that broken dignity.” -Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
“Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can anyone deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me.” — Zora Neale Hurston
Cut the ending. Revise the script. The man of her dreams is a girl.- Julie Anne Peters
You are never stronger . . . than when you land on the other side of despair.- Zadie Smith
Keeping busy is the remedy for all the ills in America. It’s also the means by which the creative impulse is destroyed.- Joyce Carol Oates
The Gloria Sirens 