Barb was raised in southern California and moved to the Bay Area to attend college when she was seventeen. She earned a Bachelor’s degree in Clinical Psychology at U.C. Berkeley, and a Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology at JFK University in the 1980’s.
Barb spent 22 years as a child abuse investigator in the Emergency Response Unit. As a refuge from the stress of her job, and traveling to L.A. every other weekend to help manage her family’s real estate business, Barb maintained hobbies that were fun and soothing: gardening, tiling, playing pool, construction with her sister…and writing.
Barb retired on her 50th birthday in 2012, and took her very first poetry class with Jude Nutter. The first piece Barb published was in January of 2014: Triptych for Christopher, about Barb’s stepson who died of AIDS in 2009. That poem became “the most read piece in the history of A & U Magazine.”
Barb’s chapbook Boxing Without Gloves came out in November of 2014 on Finishing Line Press, and it was shortlisted for the Rubery International First Book Prize. Barb's new poetry collection, Drawing Words, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press, and she is writing a biography called Auntie Mark. During the pandemic seclusion, Barb wrote a three-volume series entitled Isolation Journal. In 2017, Barb founded the Second Sunday Poetry Series in Berkeley, CA. Barb divides her time between Oakland, L.A., and Provincetown, MA.
