J.D.J. Plocher (me) writes and teaches high school English in central Texas. I spent a few more years collecting degrees than I probably ought to have. I’ve got a good collection, though: a Ph.D. in Musicology with a minor in Comparative Studies from the University of Minnesota, Master of Music degrees in Composition and Music History from Bowling Green State University, and a B.A. in Music and English from Macalester College. Being good at school turned out to be a rather insubstantial foundation for a career (particularly given the Academy’s increasing reliance on contingent faculty and consumer-oriented models of education), so academia and I called it quits.

For the first few years of Walking Ledges, I frequently wrote about #postac concerns, about the difficulty of my breakup with the Academy and the difficulty of creating a new narrative for my life. If one of those posts drew you here, I encourage you to look at my Annotated #Postac List.

These days, I write mostly about writing and teaching. I have an ongoing series of posts–Nicking from Novels–in which I read recommended works or arbitrary selections from library shelves and try to pull lessons for myself (and other writers) from them. My niche is fantasy fiction, but I’m not in an exclusive relationship with it.