I direct the Writing Program at Lenoir-Rhyne Center for Graduate Studies. I engineer the program to address the world's need for narrative, for storytellers and story-listeners in every field. Currently, I am founding the Center for Narrative Medicine at Lenoir-Rhyne University, with growing partnerships with Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons Program for Narrative Medicine as well as with Wake Forest School of Medicine and Institute for the Humanities. In 2008 I founded the multicultural poetry and storytelling festival Asheville Wordfest, which I continue to direct. I am the poet laureate of the Blue Ridge Parkway and an NC Arts Fellow for my writings on late-deafness what what deafness teaches me about listening. This work connects to my life-long work in Creative Process. Creative cognition and associative reasoning hold yet untapped medicine. All my work hovers around the heart and soul of things. As a teacher, I work with students at all skill-levels in all settings. I am gifted at opening writing up in people, in creating safe places where people can speak, share, and discover. As a community-builder, I connect the disciplines. As the poet, as the writer, as the storyteller, I find the language that can unifies the parts.