I am a recent MFA graduate of the University of Miami, where I was a fully funded Michener fellow in fiction from 2017-2020. I also hold a BFA in Dramatic Writing and English from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. I have seven years of experience teaching expository and creative writing to children, teens, and adults.
At the University of Miami, I taught the following undergraduate courses: English Composition I, English Composition II, Intro to Creative Writing, and Beginner Fiction Workshop. I also worked as a writing tutor working closely with undergraduate, graduate, law, and medical students in UM writing center, and have also worked independently as a college admissions essay editor for high school seniors for the last three years. Additionally, I have five years of experience as a creative and expository writing instructor for students ages 8-18 at Writopia Lab in New York City, and one year of experience teaching AP Literature and SAT to bilingual high school students in Panama City, Panama.
During my tenure at the arts education non-profit Girls Write Now, I developed curriculum and facilitated multi-genre, multi-media creative writing workshops for public high school girls as senior program coordinator of the Digital Media Mentoring Program, and founded the Poet's Collective, which organized poetry readings for our program members at cafs across Manhattan. I later served as a writing mentor there.
Teaching empathy, craft, and self-possession through writing is something that brings me purpose and inspiration. My teaching philosophy is student-oriented and centered around the notion that writing is a practice as transferable to a career in STEM as it is to a doctorate in literature. I teach my students, regardless of their differing major or career paths, that writing as a practice creates confidence in expression, rhetoric, and problem-solving skills. I try to treat the work of each student with respect and care, offering individualized feedback based on what the piece or the student needs. My tutoring sessions and workshops are safe spaces where students are encouraged to take part in discussion and constructive critique, and I allow my students to feel as though what they say and write has meaning while instilling in them the foundations that "toolbox," as Stephen King calls it of the powerful craft of writing.