I am a longtime freelance writer and have wide-ranging experience with books, magazines and newspapers, businesses and nonprofits, and individual clients. Since my first journalistic "success" in high school — publishing a letter in The New York Times Magazine — I have embraced the power of language to convey meaning and enhance understanding. I bring this passion for strong, effective, aesthetic writing to every project I take on.
I live and work in southern Vermont, where, depending on the season, I might take breaks to pick blackberries or top up the woodstove. If I glance up from the computer screen — I admit it; this occasionally happens — I look across the mountain into Pleasant Valley in the Taconic Range, a view painted by Grandma Moses. On my way to get a reference book, I might encounter noted South African author Tony Eprile, my husband, and we may try out words or ideas on one another. These learned exchanges might be drowned out by our son, Brendan, twelve, playing his own songs on electric guitar. Our pit-mix, Thembi (that's Zulu for "trusted"), humors us all.
I have a B.A. from Brown University, an M.S.J. from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and an M.A. in Counseling Psychology from Northwestern University. While advanced degrees do not a writer make, I believe that the combined journalism and counseling training reflects my approach: I strive to listen past the obvious and then to pull material together as polished, professional prose.
