Felicity (MFA) is a writer and teacher living in Omaha, Nebraska.

Most recently, her poem “God, Like Me, a Mother” was published in the January issue of Sojourners magazine. “Fika on Marstrand Island, Sweden” and “StarDate: August 27, Moon and Aldebaran” are available online at The Sunlight Press. Another poem, “At the Nadia Bolz-Weber Lecture,” was published in The Tishman Review.

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I’ve always appreciated my name, even though I never give it to baristas. It means happiness. You can read it in British novels. For me, it came from my dad.

“If I have a daughter someday, I’m going to name her Felicity.” This is what he told my mom on their first date at the Pizza Hut.

When I was born, she added the middle name Jo (after the Little Women heroine), and I’ve been lucky to live my forty-plus years in the beautiful birthright of the name they gave me together.

I come from faith people – and I’ve learned a lot about life from people who would never describe themselves that way. I like to read Wendell Berry novels, Mary Oliver poems, and Eula Biss essays.

What do I write? I blogged for years as a writing outlet (a few posts still available here) and then was lucky enough to attend graduate school in Creative Writing. Now my writing rotates among poems, essays about mixed up feelings about religion, and a middle-grade verse novel about a 1984 regional production of “Annie.” I want to write about everything, but too often that translates into writing about nothing.

Lucky in life, I married a music guy. He does something else to pay the bills but a lot of nights I go to sleep listening to him playing the piano downstairs. We’re enjoying watching our four kids grow up. It really is the good life.