Virginia serves as an Associate Professor of Humanities for Anna Maria College in Massachusetts. For five decades, she has taught students from pre-school to grad school, Appalachia to Inner Mongolia, ASL to drama, and research to creative writing. Virginia has published articles in educational journals read around the world.
In 2023, her memoir, Grace Interlaced, told of childhood trauma, due to a nighttime house fire and the death of her youngest brother. Shattering silence, blame, and pain cause oppressive changes in the family. Grace Interlaced, also presented a healing process in courage, hope, love, grace, and forgiveness. Virginia reads the audible version of Grace Interlaced. In 2024, the book was translated into Spanish, Gracia entrelazada, by a professional translator who read the English version and wanted it available in his native language.
In 2024, the second edition of Wounded Dove appeared with text revisions, illustrations, and photos. The main character became crippled by polio in the epidemic in Worcester, MA in the early 1900s. Though in the fiction category, everything in Wounded Dove really happened. No ideas of accessibility for physical challenges existed then. Although she conquered many restrictions and prejudices, her hopes for love led her into danger and betrayal.
2025 Virginia presented the series, Did You Eat, set in China. Book One, China Sweet and Sour, shows how a summer in remote western Inner Mongolia presented challenges in cross-cultural education, communication, relationships, ethics, and faith. Virginia returned for seven more summers working with teachers of English in remote areas of China. Book Two, China Spicy and Salty, published in December 2025 shows the unexpected came to seem the norm for the teaching teams. Virginia is working on Book 3, China Sharp and Zesty, that spans two summer assignments, one in an industrial center of Inner Mongolia and one in the beautiful city of springs in Shandong Province, the home of Confuscius.
In December 2025, Virginia also had a practical guide to writing memoirs published. A Story, Your Story, Memoirs. This small book offers an invitation to value stories of your life and the power they would have if you shared them with others. This book is a guide and encouragement for you to tell your story to inform, to build family history, to help others find courage, or to inspire. Virginia shows how lived experience in memoirs reveals the power of personal stories. Memoirs move from memory to meaning.
Virginia writes each day, spends time with family, friends, and community groups, teaches, reads, and travels.
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