I would have wanted to be a writer when I was a child if I had known it was possible.  When I could only read two words: "you" and "I," I went through a wholebook and circled them. I knew reading was the key to the rest of the world. I wrote my first mystery when I was in sixth grade--it was about a mysterious trail around a pond. I continue to write about mysterious trails around Lake Pepin in my Claire Watkins mystery series.  Some things never change.

Poetry, however, is the foundation of my work. I have written three books of poetry and have a fourth, Hand Work, coming out in 2009. I have also published a young adult novel, Dancing with an Alien. My non-fiction books include a biography of my grandmother, Halfway Home, and a book on Minnesota courthouses, both published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press. I was an editor at the Village Voice, Simon & Schuster, Graywolf Press, Mid-List Press, and The Creative Company and I'v had articles published in the Village Voice, the New York Times and the Hungry Mind Review. For many years I taught at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. 

Currently, I'm on faculty in the low-residency Children's Literature MFA program at Hamline University in St. Paul.

I am bi-riverbank, living on both sides of the Mississippi, with writer Pete Hautman in Minnesota and Wisconsin. And Rene and Jacques, our toy poodles.