DC to CT!

My twenty-five years in Washington, DC as a professor, writer and editor carved out the frame of who I’ve become as a professional.

I learned so much moving through various jobs at National Geographic and the Smithsonian and teaching part-time at Johns Hopkins University’s MA in Writing program, where I won the Teaching Award and the Professional Achievement Award for my work as an essayist and author of American Idle: A Journey Through Our Sedentary Culture. During that same period, I also published a history of National Public Radio, essays in the Washington Post, New York Times and other publications, and wrote an award-winning photobiography of the Wright brothers (National Geographic Books).

In 2007 I returned to my native Connecticut for a range of reasons, including my fabulous mom, and took a tenured position as Program Coordinator of the Writing Minors at Central Connecticut State University. I won the Teaching Award at CCSU as well. In the last few years, I have published many essays and the award-winning book, co-authored with my son Donald Collins, At the Broken Places: A Mother and Trans Son Pick Up the Pieces (Beacon Books, 2018,) which won the Best Memoir of the Year Award from the American Society of Journalists and Authors. In the summers, I teach the nonfiction writing workshop for the Yale Summer Writing Program.