Nan grew up in Kansas and went to a convent school. Both of these stark landscapes influenced her art.

Another influence is illustrated by the following true story:

The convent where she attended the first two years of high school was situated on its own acreage in the middle of the city, surrounded by busy streets and bordered by a long chain-link fence. One day, as she was walking along the perimeter by the fence, a car full of teenage boys drove by, yelling something at her. They kept circling around, and finally she understood what they were saying: “Why’d ya join the convent?”

At their next circuit, she yelled back, “I had a disappointed love affair!” Already she was telling tales of love and loss, before she had known either. And that hasn’t stopped, now that she has plenty of both under her belt.

An incurable romantic, Nan sees love in all kinds of places — dreams, dining-room chairs, childhood memories, the merciless beauty of Nature, and of course, in the eyes and hands of the beloved.

She also fell in love with rhyme and meter — words and music — and never got over it. Nan likes to write music that is singable and poetry that is accessible without a decoder, combining both of these art forms in her song lyrics. Her work is distilled from everything she’s read or imagined or experienced — from the ridiculous to the sublime. You can read, listen, and decide which is which.