I’m fortunate and privileged to have made writing, teaching, gaming, and adventuring the center of my life for the past 25 years. Among my many hats: I am an essayist, memoirist, critic, journalist, poet, teacher, performer, speaker and failed filmmaker and novelist. I wrote the award-winning memoir Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks. I’ve published my short form work — personal essays, articles, reviews, cultural commentaries, profiles, opinion pieces, short stories, and poems— in the Globe (of course), but also the New York Times, Washington Post, Esquire, Wired, Salon, O the Oprah Magazine, National Geographic, Brevity, Electric Literature, Poetry, Poets & Writers, The Southern Review, North American Review, The Massachusetts Review, among other publications. I’ve been a book, film and food critic for the Globe (where I was also the bicycling culture writer), New York Times, Art New England, National Public Radio/WBUR's TheARTery, Pariscope and Time Out, and a travel guide writer for Fodor’s. Twice my work has been named "Notable" by The Best American Essays. I was awarded the Hobblestock Peace Poetry Competition and the Esme Bradberry Contemporary Poets Prize; writer's residencies from the Millay Colony for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center and Writing Downtown (Las Vegas); and grants from the Somerville Arts Council and Vermont Arts Council. My poems and essays have been selected for textbooks and anthologies.These days, I teach creative writing at GrubStreet in Boston, where I co-founded GrubStreet's Young Adult Writers Program (YAWP) and now lead the Essay Incubator program and offer workshops on essay, creative nonfiction and memoir. I have also taught writing at LitArtsRI, Louisiana State University, Emerson College, Media Bistro and Marlboro College. I also lead writing workshops for non-profit social justice organizations, and I teach how to play Dungeons & Dragons.A regular presenter, performer, and event moderator, I’ve appeared on NPR, The Discovery Channel, PBS, CBC, BBC, Mortified, and the TED stage and podcast. I have given talks and readings at Harvard, MIT, USC, Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival, La Sorbonne, the New York Public Library, and has given hundreds of readings elsewhere throughout the North America, Europe, and Middle-earth. (I even made an appearance in the French documentary Revenge of the Geeks.) As Tolkien wrote, “It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.”