“A disciplined and driven student. At all times serious, focused, and attempting to articulate a personal vision.”
– Studio Art Professor Ben Moss, Dartmouth College
I graduated with honors from Dartmouth College in 1993 with a degree in creative writing and literature. After college, I moved to Vail, Colorado and worked as a ski technician in the winter and served as an editorial assistant for Vail Valley Magazine. I had a variety of jobs in the summer – from road construction, mowing grass on a golf course, digging ditches, cleaning carpets --basically trying to make ends meet while exploring the Rocky Mountains. I also tried to keep writing in my daily life.
Looking to escape the fur coats of Vail, I moved to Whitefish, Montana in 1995 where I worked as a ski shop technician, dishwasher, waiter, and whitewater raft guide. In 1996, I met Lyndsay and we moved to Seattle together where I worked my first salaried job as a marketing writer for a start-up software company. But the pull of the mountains was too intense. Stock-options be-damned, we returned to Whitefish in 1998 when I landed a job as the public relations manager of Big Mountain Resort. We married in 2000.
In 2003, I left the salaried life to work independently and focus more on my creative writing. We still live in Whitefish with our young son, Ethan and our two older black dogs, Scout and Abby. From 2003-2006, my wife and I designed and built a guest house on the back of our lot in town to serve as our freelance headquarters, which we call the "cabin." To push my writing to the next level, from 2006 to the present, I have been pursuing a Master of Arts degree at Dartmouth College during summer terms. I plan to complete the degree in 2010.
In 2007, two things happened to me. First, I blew out my ACL while working with a film company on the slopes of Big Mountain for a ski promotion video. The conditions were icy, and I hopped off a little rock on the East Rim, had my weight too far back when I landed, and felt the pop and burn. I've been skiing since the third grade, and beyond my family and my writing, it is one of my greatest passions. While the injury was devastating for me, it provided me some time to think and I proceeded with an idea that had been bubbling in my consciousness since my first semester of grad school: launch a literary journal that focused on the art, writing and photography of mountain culture.
And so the Whitefish Review was born. I have long-term plans for this venture and have formed a non-profit corporation as we move into our sixth year of publishing. I've been privileged to work with such esteemed writers as Tim Cahill, Douglas H. Chadwick, Ernest Hebert, Rick Bass, Terry Tempest Williams, Pam Houston, and David James Duncan, who I owe a huge debt of gratitude to for their belief in this creative venture.
The writing business is one with a lot of highs and lows, but I wouldn't trade it. Managing risk and fear, while pushing forward with love have been the keys for me. I continue to freelance travel-related stories for a variety of regional and national newspapers and magazines, work on my fiction, as well as a book-length creative non-fiction project. I'm also an avid photographer and serve as a freelance photography coordinator for Whitefish Mountain Resort.
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