My work is influenced by events in the contemporary world and memories of growing up as a woman in the American South.  I was born in Yazoo City, Mississippi, but my youth was spent moving every year because my father served in the Navy.  Each summer I returned to Yazoo City to stay with my maternal grandmother on Wolf Lake; yet, I always felt like an outsider.  As a young girl growing up in the 60's, I observed the social and political upheaval of the American South.  Those events, coupled with the summers in Mississippi, continue to have a significant impact on my work.  Later, I lived in Brooklyn, New York, for two years.  That experience developed and deepened my perspective of home because I was continually asked to "tell about the South."