In our alumni spotlight series, learn about Harvard graduates' most meaningful experiences from college, and how Harvard impacted their professional and personal paths after graduation.
Hometown & Current City: Austin, Texas; Boise, Idaho
House Affiliation: Adams
Concentration and Secondary Field: English
Current Job Title/Company or organization: Author; Founder of Book Year Writers' Circle; Writing Faculty at Harvard Extension School and Oxford Dept. of Continuing Education
What was your professional path after college? Freelance writing, PhD in English, started an Austin TX literary journal, writing books, teaching writing (first at Austin Community College, University of Texas), published 13 books and counting.
What fills your time now? Professionally and otherwise? Parenting, writing, reading, discussing books and fun ideas, walking, drinking enormous amounts of tea—pretty much the same things that filled my time as an undergrad, minus the parenting.
How did your academic experience at Harvard guide you in your post-grad pursuits? Harvard classes and house life set the template for the creative and intellectual and community life that I wanted to live.
What was a favorite class you took and why? Maria Tatar's Freshman Seminar on Fairy Tales. It changed my thinking entirely about my favorite stories, and the excitement left by it has lived in me ever since. There is a fairy tale (or myth, or very old story) at the core of every one of my published books. This is thanks to Maria.
Did you have any research/internship opportunities and/or professor/mentor relationships that were influential? Maria Tatar was a giant for me, in the best and most generous way. After college, Nancy Sommers, in whose Harvard Study of Undergraduate Writing I participated, hired me to do research for the Expository Writing Program, and she became my other Harvard-gifted beloved mentor and encourager. The fierce, brilliant, and ancient Hope Hale Davis, in my four years as her student at Radcliffe Seminars, taught me discipline and to think of my writing in the most expansive ways. All three of these teachers set the template for the writer-teacher-mother I hoped to become.
What were you involved in extracurricularly? My greatest commitment was to a weekly community of Cambridge memoirists offered through Radcliffe Seminars and taught by Hope Hale Davis. I was the youngest in the group. I grew up tremendously as a writer over the four years I wrote with them. I since shared my experience with an interviewer for Harvard Magazine. I also got involved editing a poetry magazine (The Gamut), as well as participating for one year in the Signet Society, whose members and their creative ambitions inspired me daily. I also spent a delightful spring playing Radcliffe Rugby.
How did your extracurricular activities impact your Harvard experience? And have they had an impact on your post-grad life? They set the template entirely. My first public creative enterprise after college was to found a lit journal, much like the one I edited at Harvard. I have spent my career writing books, as I started to do in college, and teaching classes, in the spirit of my beloved professors. My life and work are centered around creating and nurturing creative communities.
What is a favorite memory of Harvard House life? Adams House Masquerade! And just sitting around the dining hall between meals, drinking tea with whomever happened to sit at my table.
What is your favorite Harvard tradition and why? Primal Scream. Probably that is the wrong answer! But it is the truth.
What advice do you have for someone applying to college? Go wherever inspires you. While there, try out everything that you believe you might love.