Introductory Blog

I am originally from Yonkers, New York, but my family moved to North Carolina when I was five. Appropriately, we relocated to the town of Cary, more commonly referred to as the Confinement Area for Relocated Yankees (where the lawns are broad and the minds are narrow). Cary was indeed a bubble that somehow managed to shield itself from outside "southern" forces and anything improper.  I certainly enjoyed my childhood--I was constantly outside, biking, running, rollerblading, building forts in the woods, rescuing abandoned goose eggs--but I never felt fully at ease. I always dreamed of living elsewhere, moving away. I did not realize how little I knew about Southern culture until I went to Chapel Hill for college. I came across so many new things: southern accents, barbeque, okra, mailboxes that didn't match and lawns that weren't perfectly manicured. And it felt like I was finally home. Thomas Wolfe said of Chapel Hill, "It's the closest place to magic I've ever been," and I wholeheartedly agree.

Books became my escapist drug of choice from a young age. I was voracious. My parents were not huge readers, and it baffled them that my eight-year-old self could spend an entire afternoon curled up on the dining room floor with an Emily Dickinson biography and a box of tissues (I found her story quite moving). I tend to go on obsessive reading binges: I'll get completely hooked on a subject matter and read and research about it as much as I possibly can. (I've had to learn that the stopping point must come for the sake of producing tangible work.)  As example, I saw Tom Stoppard's Coast of Utopia trilogy when it premiered in London and afterwords became obsessed with Mother Russia. I took Russian history classes, did an independent study on the Russian intelligentsia, and strongly considered spending a summer in Siberia to help build a walking trail around Lake Baikal. (It's the world's oldest and deepest lake, in case you're interested. Maybe that's where they should start looking for Nessie.)

As a writer I am fascinated by how quickly and easily we can shift our tone and intentions to meet the demands of our audience. I worked in the Public Relations field and learned a whole new way to craft an email (think lots of exclamation points). I worked in the academic journals division of a university press and learned just how different a biologist's paper might be were he to submit it to one journal versus another. I believe few things are more beautiful than the art of revision. I love writing a paper and then going at it with my pen. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I also dabble in writing poetry and fiction and have been dying to take a crack at a creative non-fiction idea I've had for years, but it's all really just a hobby at present.

My primary goal for the semester is to make my classes work for me. I want my research projects to help advance and inform current interests while also opening my eyes to new topics, new ideas.

The worst class I ever had was home economics in middle school. There was a tragic incident in which I misread directions and told my cooking group to add 1/3 cup of baking soda to our cookies. From that point on, the teacher hated me and assumed I would fail at every other recipe we proceeded to carry out. (For the record, the cookies actually tasted fabulous. They just made you obscenely thirsty after consuming.) This class experience probably helps to explain why I really do not enjoy baking or cooking. But I love baked goods others make and share with me! 

Three (or four) works that have deeply touched my life are Jill McCorkle's The Cheerleader, Ernest Hemingway's Sun Also Rises AND Garden of Eden, and Tom Stoppard's Arcadia.

What are three things I know about the United States during the years 1770-1830? This question admittedly made me a bit nervous at first; I felt like a contestant on Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader who was absolutely going to lose to some smug little kid wearing groovy classes. But I can in fact tell you three things I found lurking around in my head:
1. In 1827 Edgar Allan Poe enlisted in the Army. He did it for the money.
2. Thomas Jefferson thought that Cuba would make a very fine state. His instructions: take over Cuba as soon as possible.
3. The Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776. 

Three things about me you probably should know are:
1. I'm obsessed with the show Doctor Who and will try to sell you on it if you've never seen it. I'm relentless, so you should go ahead and check it out. Do it.
2. I studied abroad in Cuba for a semester, and my education there probably gave me a rather Un-American account of Cuban-American relations. I'm excited that Cuba is a search term this semester.
3. Until the second semester of my MA program, I was an anglophile who was actually a staunch American modernist. I took a Victorian literature class that changed things, though my focus on the Victorian Afterlife (in addition to sensation fiction) has helped to make this transition easier.