He grew up around Milwaukee, graduating from University of Iowa Writers Workshop. He taught English at UW-La Crosse and then lived for many years in Madison, where he was active in literary circles, teaching through UW-Extension and working for a number of publishing houses. He is the editor of the three- volume The Journey Home: The Literature of Wisconsin through Four Centuries (1989). He moved to Wisconsin Indian Country in 1998, where he edited a Native literary magazine through Oneida Nation Arts Program and conducted writing workshops in Native communities throughout Wisconsin. In 2012, he was co-chair with Kimberly Blaeser of Returning the Gift Conference, a national Native writer's conference held in Milwaukee. In 2013, his collection of poetry The Book of Big Dog Town was published by Fireweed Press. The collection focuses on his forty-year experience with the thousand-year-old Wisconsin sacred site known as Aztalan.