Writing did not truly click for me until college. As a Writing Fellow at Barnard, I grew to trust myself as a writer and as an attentive, curious reader of other students’ work. I learned that having a reader is invaluable because they have the unique perspective of not being inside our heads. A good reader lets the writer know how their work comes across yet respects the writer’s ultimate authority over their own story.

I was inspired by my time as a Writing Fellow to become an English teacher. Over the following decade, I taught in public and private schools, every grade from 6th through 12th, and every type of writer you can imagine. My mission was always to empower each student to approach the writing process with confidence and with a deeper understanding of themselves as writers and thinkers.

In my years as a teacher, I spent the summers pursuing my master’s in English at Middlebury’s Bread Loaf School of English, where I continued to challenge myself academically and creatively and reconnected with my love of theater. I began writing plays in my spare time, eventually shifting careers to get my MFA in Playwriting at Hunter College, where I have learned to look first and foremost for the human truth in a story, to search for the beating heart on the page.

Those seemingly ordinary moments of our lives can often reveal who we are in surprising ways. What is the story that only you can tell? I can’t wait to help you find it.