Title:
Collegiate Professor
Pronouns:
she, her
Subject Areas
Writing
English
Theatre
Communication
Education
PhD, English Literature and Criticism, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
MA, English, McNeese State University
BA, English Education, Louisiana Tech University
Teaching Locations
Kaiserslautern Military Community, Germany
Baumholder, Germany
Email
I grew up in north Louisiana's piney woods, outside a small town famous for watermelons and basketball. I earned a Bachelor of Arts in English Education from Louisiana Tech, a Masters in English at McNeese State University, and a Ph.D. in English from Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
Before joining UMGC, I taught high school and college English in southwest Louisiana. Then one steamy summer day in 2014, I boarded a plane from Lake Charles to Tokyo and found myself on a path winding through some of the world's busiest cities, including Tokyo and Seoul. I spent four lovely years in Asia before moving to Germany. I sometimes tell my students that writing has carried me around the world.
In 2018, I received the UMGC Presidential Award for commitment and contribution to the university. One of my favorite projects is leading the UMGC Europe Military Community writing group. Life experience inspired my research interests, leading to ongoing studies of intersections among trauma, literature, and writing.
Inspired by Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, which teaches that stories are magic and that they can save us, I found a new understanding of a childhood shaped among war veterans and by memories of those lost to war. One of my favorite lines in literature comes from Mary Oliver’s poem “Wild Geese” and promises that “Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, / the world offers itself to your imagination.” I can vouch for that.