A proud alum of UWEC, he earned his B.A. in literature and quickly fell in love with the works of the Bronte sisters, R. L. Stevenson, D. H. Lawrence, Walt Whitman, Willa Cather, Flannery O'Connor, Mary Oliver, and Thomas Pynchon;after his undergraduate career, he then completed his M.A. and Ph.D. in modern letters from the University of Tulsa. His scholarly publications and interests focus mainly on authors of the American West and their treatment of land and animals.