About Brenda

I was born on a farm in the Red River Valley of eastern North Dakota and grew up climbing trees, riding my pony and daydreaming under a wide prairie sky. I left North Dakota after college and have since lived in Colorado, Minnesota, Iowa, Washington, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and for the past twenty-plus years, Michigan. I have a Ph.D. in English, and recently left my position in the English Department at the University of Michigan to devote more time to writing.

My first novel, Mavis, was published in 1996 (Fawcett-Columbine), and my second novel, Dakota, Or What’s a Heaven For, was published in 2010 (North Dakota State University Press). I also have published a book of scholarship, Teaching the Postmodern: Fiction and Theory (Routledge, 1992).

My spouse and I live in the country near Ann Arbor, with two horses and two dogs. When not writing I might be trying to improve my woodworking skills, riding horse, working in my vegetable garden, reading, exercising at the gym, listening to opera or planning trips, some of which I actually take. No matter where I am living or what I am doing, I think of myself as a North Dakotan.