I sprouted up in the smallish, forgotten port city of Duluth, Minnesota, the youngest child in a fundamentalist pastor's family, so most days of the week were filled with the cadence of the King James Version, hymns, and simmering repression.

After high school, rebellious and carrying a chip on my shoulder, I rode Greyhounds and thumbed rides around the West coast, collecting perspective and emerging with a new vision—to transfer, through careful attention, the observable world to the page.

I made my way next to Atlanta, Georgia and Emory University where, as a scholarship student, I studied poetry under Jericho Brown. From Atlanta, I moved to New York City and, in 2019, completed an MFA in Poetry Writing at Columbia University.

Since then, I've moved frequently—from central Mexico to rural Vermont to upstate New York—before settling in Minneapolis.