I grew up in Gardenville, New York, next door to the famous artist, Charles Burchfield. The contrast between his realistic and surrealistic paintings seems a symbolic parallel to my life and writing. My first publications were in high school poetry anthologies. My love of meter and conciseness is apparent in my poetry collections: Again For the First Time, Mirror Me, Poems For the Asking, Women, Flowers, Fantasy, Spirit and Joy, and over two-hundred individual poems, essays, articles, and short stories in anthologies, journals, magazines and newspapers. I was a teacher, actor, director, and writer for children’s theater, and then coordinated a Performing Arts Program for a boy's detention facility. I ran a small publishing company, and worked in a local print shop. I spent time at the ashram of Guru Maharaj Ji and the home of the Sisters of Social Service.

My adventures continued as I became a television Production Assistant for radio/ television programs, and a journalist/photographer for the Buffalo Catholic Diocese. It was there that I honed my skills in researching, interviewing, and writing dialog.

I returned to teaching at the SUNY Buffalo Educational Opportunity Center and became their first female full professor. My interest in oral histories led to a video library of firsthand accounts of the Civil Rights Movement, plus two biographies of women religious. I also wrote, produced, and directed four one-woman plays: Mother Cabrini's Mission to America; Always In My Heart: The Story of St. Marianne Cope; Light and Dark: the Story of Sr. Judith Fenyvesi, SSS. and This Little Light of Mine, The Story of Sister Karen Klimczak, SSJ.

My Nikki Barnes Mystery Series; Agenda for Murder, Called to Kill, Close to You, and Evil examines the grittier side of life and post-war trauma. They are amateur detective novels where good always prevails. My writing became more eclectic with Sister Amnesia, a humorous allegory; Katharine Hepburn's Brownies about murder and the power of friendship; and Guardians of Gardenville, the Fourteen Holy Helpers.