I’m a writer and educator currently living in Western Massachusetts. Raised in southwestern Ontario, I’ve lived and worked around the Great Lakes region: planting pulp-and-paper forests west of Superior, shuffling portable classrooms throughout the Golden Horseshoe, and teaching writing on the third coast in Chicago. On the page, I’m drawn to the backdrop of a story, its landscape and location, or what the Midwestern writer Michael Martone calls, “the ground situation.” I’ve written about land and river histories, family stories, and matters of spirituality and the environment. I think the stories we tell from the places we live are, for better or for worse, world-making and therefore worthy of our great attention.

I studied English and history at Western University and hold an MA in Literature from McMaster University. From 2011-2017, I taught English at Truman College (City Colleges of Chicago) where I also served as Learning Communities Coordinator. When I’m not pacing between my desk and the refrigerator, I’m volunteering as a transition curriculum developer with The Care Center, Holyoke and as a composition instructor with University of the People. I’m also elbows-deep in the travails of cloth diapering a months-old infant.

Contact:
E | gmartin9 [at] gmail [dot] com
T | @gmartin9