I am an Associate Professor of English at Calvin College, where I have taught since 1996. I teach early modern British literature, world literature, Shakespeare, composition, and poetry. For me, teaching and writing are mutually enriching actions. Teaching keeps me in contact with great literature of the past and present and with the unmatched vitality of young minds. Writing allows me to reflect, imagine, and enter a larger human conversation about things mundane and eternal. In 2002, Tarcher/Putnam published my first book, "Great with Child: On Becoming a Mother" , a meditative account of my third pregnancy and my son's first year. My second book appeared in February 2005, published by Jossey-Bass, called "So Much More: An Invitation to Christian Spirituality", it is a kind of imaginative orientation to the Christian faith. My editor describes the book as "a doorway for people to look through and see home."