My novel, BODY AND BREAD (Engine Books, 2013) won the PEN Southwest Award and the Steven Turner Award from the Texas Institute of Letters, was one of "Ten Titles to Pick Up Now" in O, OPRAH'S MAGAZINE and one of HUFFINGTON POST's "Summer Picks." My fiction, creative nonfiction, reviews and poetry have appeared in a variety of journals, newspapers, and anthologies. I co-edited the anthology, ART AT OUR DOORSTEP: SAN ANTONIO WRITERS & ARTISTS (Trinity University Press, 2008). As an investigative journalist, I reported on the origins of extraordinary violence in LIFE and D MAGAZINE. I won a Dobie Paisano Fellowship and am the founder and executive director emeritus of Gemini Ink (www.geminiink.org [2]), a nonprofit literary center. I teach literature and fiction workshops in the MA/MFA Program of Literature, Creative Writing, and Social Justice at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, where I am writer in residence.