I make small videogames, write poetry, and increasingly combine the two into the hybrid form of videogame poems.
I'm currently pursuing a PhD in Information at the University of Toronto, where I think about how independent videogame makers—especially those working within literary hybrid forms—navigate systems of material constraints, rhetorical genres, and social publication. I focus particularly on work made with constrained gamemaking tools such as Twine, Bitsy, PuzzleScript, and Decker.
I was previously an assistant professor of English at Trine University. I hold an MFA in poetry from Temple University, an MA in English from the University of Maine, and a BA in English from the University of Kansas.
As an educator, I teach various forms of creative and academic writing (and, most recently, videogame history and design). My students and I pay close attention to the myriad social, material, and rhetorical factors that influence our composing practices, especially when we write in new and/or high-stakes genres. Above all, we try not to lose sight of the fact that we're curious humans trying to do something quite difficult: represent ourselves in a form that can be recognized by another.
You can find me in a few other places on the World Wide Web, primarily Itch.io and Bluesky.
This webpage is also a messy record of my own self-directed HTML education. I pursue it at my leisure (so: a plodding speed), and I update it infrequently. I use Neocities to design this site, for those interested in a similar experience. Neocities makes me feel like a wide-eyed tween in a 2002 computer lab once again. It's great.