When I was 14 years old, my father called the editor of the local newspaper, the Haverhill Gazette. "My son, he writes all the time," he said. "Could you give him a job?"

The editor said he could.

That summer I tagged along with the court and police reporter, down to the mayor's office, the police station, the fire station. Then we went back to the newsroom, where I found an empty desk - it was an afternoon paper, so everyone cleared out after the deadline at 11 - and typed short essays for the Saturday supplement on an electric typewriter.

I've been writing and publishing ever since.

I was born in San Antonio, Texas, but was raised in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristos in Colorado and in southern New Hampshire. I went to college in Massachusetts, spent a year in Colombia, then taught English in Taiwan for two years. In 1993, I returned to Texas for graduate school, and in 1996 finished an MA in linguistics. I graduated with a PhD in English in 2000, writing a dissertation about how linguists write language down.

Throughout my foray as a teacher and academic, I never stopped writing fiction or journalism - in 1998, I became a contributing writer for the Texas Observer, and an essay published in the North American Review was nominated for a National Magazine Award. Upon graduating, I realized I had a very special choice to make. I could become a professor, or I could become a writer.

You know what choice I made. It's been fascinating -- I love the work I do, the people I get to talk to, and the people I write for. Through my articles and interviews -- I've done more than 70 radio interviews, including on Weekend All Things Considered, On the Media, The Tavis Smiley Show, Whad'Ya Know?, Voice of America, Australian Broadcasting Company, Canadian Broadcasting Company, and multiple commercial and public radio stations all over the country -- I've reached more people than I would in a lifetime of classroom teaching. I haven't stopped teaching, it's just a bigger venue.

I split my time between Austin, Texas and Portland, Maine. In 2008 I received the Dobie Paisano Writing Fellowship from the University of Texas at Austin and the Texas Institute of Letters.