About Viki

I hate these things. I’ve written a thousand of them in the course of my lifetime. It’s one thing if I have to write a bio for a specific purpose, and if I have a restriction on the number of words, but this is my fucking website and I get to use as many words as I want and that has always been a problem for me. Because given free rein, I’m usually gonna go ahead and use all the available words.

But, ya know, let’s try to be professional about it. I’m not putting it in third person, though. *crosses arms, stomps foot*

I’m a writer, and a photographer. These are the things I do. Whether or not I get paid to do those things (I have, and I do) is entirely irrelevant, so please stop asking me what I do for a living. It’s so annoying. I’M ALIVE, AREN’T I? *adjusts chip on shoulder*

Other things I do: I cook, and I travel, and I eat food that I make and food in restaurants near me and food in restaurants I find when I travel. I take pictures of the food. I post the pictures on the Instagram. I take pictures on my travels and I post those too. I write about my travels. I write about the food I make. Sometimes I write about very random things. Sometimes I also take pictures of random things, and I post those all over the socials, too. What? Like you don’t?

Okay, I said I was going to be professional about it.

I have a BA and an MFA from Columbia College in Fiction Writing and Creative Writing. I’m pretty sure I never bothered to complete some final paper in order to get the MA in teaching Creative Writing, because I was busy teaching Creative Writing. I don’t do that anymore, because the pay was bad and Columbia College was falling apart and I decided to go do other things.

I’m stupid proud of the fact that someone gave me money for a photo I took of Jeff Tweedy, and put it on the cover of his first solo record, Together at Last, not just because I’m a creepy fangirl but also because I love the photograph, and I love that he loved it, too. I mean, there’s a time and a place to be humble about stuff, but I basically walked around for two years wearing the album t-shirt, telling random people that I took the picture, so… yeah, no humility here.

I wrote a column for my local paper for a long time. I don’t do that anymore, because my town is small and I ran out of things to say and also got a little bitter about the way it was changing. But it gave me a Chicago Tribune byline for a while, so that’s cool.

Long story short though? I write, take pictures, cook food, and eat. I play video games with my kids. I travel as much as possible. I try really hard to be a good citizen of the world and I fail a lot. I get mad at people on the internet. I love my family and friends.

That’s it. Now you know me.