After Isaac, my new young adult novel, won a gold medal for YA fiction in the 2013 Moonbeam Awards for Children's Books. Publishers Weekly called it "an emotionally complex story of life, love, grief, and recovery." My first novel, Angie, I Says, a New York Times notable book, was made into the movie Angie starring Geena Davis and James Gandolfini. I have also published essays in the Times. My collection of poems, Recurring Dream, won the 2011 Pecan Grove Press chapbook competition, and I have published poems in several journals, including Hanging Loose and Michigan Quarterly Review. For 10 years I was an adjunct professor of English at Kingsborough Community College, and for the past four years I have been a writing workshop leader for the New York Writers Coalition.