Brief Bio
I studied writing under a private tutorial, at the University of Michigan, with the poet Robert Hayden and edited both Hayden’s Collected Prose (University of Michigan Press) and his Collected Poems (Liveright). I hold a Bachelor's and Master's degree from U of M, the latter in English.
I lived for more than fifteen years outside Michigan—in Japan, where I taught at Gunma University in Maebashi; in Arizona, on the Colorado River Indian Tribes Reservation; in Illinois, on the central farmlands and on the Mississippi; ultimately returning to my suburban hometown of Rochester.
A Fulbright-Hays scholar to China in 1994, I studied at Beijing University, the Buddhist Mogao Caves on the old Silk Road, and elsewhere in China, including Hong Kong and the Academia Sinica in Taiwan. While a National Endowment for the Humanities scholar in 1995 on India, I further explored the conflicts between the traditional regional civilizations of Islamic and Hindu cultures and modernity.
I have been an outspoken advocate of the United Nations and was an accredited participant at the UN Millennium Forum (2000).
For more than a decade, I've been part of the struggle for religious freedom and conscience within the Baha'i Faith and the renewal of the Reform Bahai Faith.