My love affair with language began in 8th grade when, as I read short stories, I saw how word-crafting could issue in what I call 3-D thinking. Throughout my 25 years of teaching and tutoring college students at an Ivy League university and at other local institutions guiding them through class essays, research projects, honors and masters theses, and graduate school personal statements--I always found joy in helping students discover what they wanted to sayand to express themselves coherently and persuasively. I hold a B.A. in English from Fordham University summa cum laude and in 1998 I earned a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Pennsylvania. In the course of completing my doctoral project after a long pause from grad school to raise my son, I cultivated the ability, and empathy, to look at academic challenges resourcefully from both sides of the desk. Given that my research on Hamlet was highly interdisciplinary-- joyous and original--I have carried that intellectual exhilaration into all my work as a lecturer, writing specialist, tutor, academic advisor and administrator, always urging students to seek out more conceptual connections and to write as integratively as possible. Currently I am working part-time by choice, but my staunch resolve that the pen is mightier than the sword remains intact and never fails to excite me. I want to share my excitement, expertise, and love of writing with you--and am ready to motivate you and empower you, as I have done so for numerous students, to write your best thinking!

I am a voracious reader of novels, non-fiction, and magazines such as The Atlantic, Time, and Vanity Fair. Moreover, I love to sing (am going to join a local glee club) and enjoy music, from Beethoven to The Beatles. I also like going to museums and marvel at the art of Picasso, Renoir, Van Gogh and Monet. Sometimes, when the spirit moves me, I read Shakespeare and 17th Century English poetry for fun. Recently I finished two novels--The Underground Railroad and Migrations--both powerfully written, with the first set in early 19th Century slavery-beset America and the second, in an undefined future where climate change had wrought terrible havoc on land and in the ocean--but both novels highlight, in differing ways, the extraordinary resilience and strength of the human spirit and the goodness of character that can be found in people when we look in the right, and sometimes surprising, places for it. I also enjoy watching thought-provoking films that question conventional responses and stereotypes. Since I was born in New York City and raised by Italian immigrant parents, I am always drawn to bicultural topics, whether political, historical or literary.