Initially a physics major, Alex graduated with a BA in English from Rice University (magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa). Subsequently, he earned his PhD in English Literature from Rutgers, and his dissertation project was awarded the prestigious Dan David Prize in Literature by an...

Alison grew up in Concord, MA, known for its literary and revolutionary history (Henry David Thoreau inspired the name of her first dog Walden). Alison has always loved reading and writing; at Brown University, she studied Comparative Literature and Italian Studies. While studying abroad for a...

Born and raised in Hawaii, Amelia was excited to experience the snowy winters of rural Vermont when she started her undergrad degree at Middlebury College. Along with gradually figuring out how to layer, she fell in love with the Italian language. After spending a year abroad at the Università...

Andrew was born and raised in New York City, where he developed a love for history and English at museums and bookstores across Manhattan. Andrew graduated from Columbia University cum laude with a major in history and an English minor. In support of his history honors thesis on the...

Anna is a Harvard-educated linguist and historian and has taught Humanities at Boston College, Brown, Phillips Andover, Harvard, and MIT. She has tutored privately
for many years. While in college, Anna tutored middle-schoolers in remedial English and composition. After entering a graduate...

Audrey was raised in Arlington, VA and graduated from Northeastern University with a major in international affairs and a minor in Arabic. During her time at Northeastern, she studied Arabic in Jordan and conflict resolution in the Balkans. She also spent six months working with a freelance...

Ben graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard with a degree in Literature and a secondary field in Computer Science. After contemplating life as a professional musician, he decided to go into legal research; these days, Ben studies how technologies like artificial intelligence are challenging...

Ben grew up near Philadelphia, where easy access to the city’s enormous park system spurred his curiosity about how people change the places they live in. Ben attended Amherst College, majoring in Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought and graduating summa cum laude with Phi Beta Kappa honors....

Beth grew up just outside of New York City in Stamford, Connecticut. She followed her passion for languages and literature to Middlebury College in Vermont, where she graduated magna cum laude with a BA in English and American Literatures and Italian. After graduating, she worked in digital...

In 2008, Brent graduated from NYU, double-majoring in Literature and Music. He made the Dean’s List and was awarded the Dean’s Grant for Creative Writing. After graduating, and living briefly in France, he became an English and History tutor, helping students improve their grades and craft...

Cait was born and raised in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. After attending events on Penn's campus and at the Kelly Writers House throughout her childhood, her dream of receiving a Penn education became a reality when she studied for and received her Bachelor's degree in Biological...

Charlotte was born in Utah, grew up in England, and has lived in Mexico, Peru, and Chile. She holds a B.A. with first class honors and distinction in English and Spanish from Oxford University, an M.A. in Hispanic Studies from Brown, and a postgraduate certificate in translation from the...

Chris grew up in Toms River, New Jersey, where he developed an appreciation for the finer things in life, especially the music of Bruce Springsteen, the invaluable service of gas station attendants, and mozzarella cheese (pronounced “mootz-ah-rell,” or simply “muhtz”), though he has since...

Claire graduated from Brown University with a bachelor’s degree in English literature and honors in nonfiction writing. She now holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting from the New York Academy of Art.

Claire has taught English literature at a high school in Athens, Greece, and...

Connor is a cofounder of an upcoming cryptography software project and the sole proprietor of a novel-in-progress. He grew up in Wyoming—his true loyalties are with the forests of the Snowy Range and the rock formations of Vedauwoo. He graduated from Duke in 2012 as an Angier B. Duke Memorial...

After growing up on a farm in Iowa, Danielle moved to Massachusetts, where she studied English with a citation (minor) in Spanish at Harvard University. At Harvard, Danielle was elected to Phi Beta Kappa as a junior and graduated summa cum laude a year later. She spent most of her free time in...

Austin, TX is Devin’s hometown: when he was young, his family moved there from Orlando, FL because they realized they had finally finished seeing every part of Disney World. He got his BA in philosophy at Yale, where he graduated magna cum laude and won 1st prize in the Yale Public Speaking...

Eliza grew up on an educational farm in Western Massachusetts, The Farm School, and was milking cows before she could read. Then she picked up a book and started reading everything (and everywhere) she could. She majored in English at Bard College, where she won several awards for her academic...

Originally from Connecticut, Elizabeth graduated cum laude from Harvard College with a BA in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and a language citation in German. While at Harvard, she participated extensively in the performing arts scene, earning the David McCord Prize for Unusual...

When Emma was fifteen, she started her own watercolor portrait business. Her favorite clients were the dogs. Always interested in life’s big questions, she spent her undergraduate years at Yale majoring in Religious Studies, contributing to a student-run journal that focused on the subject of...

Emmy did not learn how to read until third grade, many long months after her twin sister; and she has been making up for lost time ever since. An avid reader and book-worm (more like the Hungry Caterpillar of books), Emmy studied literature and the visual arts at Yale College, where she...

            Erik hails from Kansas, which, contrary to popular belief, is not flatter than a pancake, but has plenty of hills and forests (and is not in black and white). He attended the University of Kansas for his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Classics. During his time at KU, Erik won an...

Evan’s enthusiasm for helping others with their writing began in the second grade, when he coached his friend Michael through the writing and illustration of a short book about a society of friendly rodents who lived beneath the stairs of a house. Evan attended The Evergreen State College in...

Guy did his undergrad in France at the Université de Limoges where he got a Maîtrise in English Literature, with a Minor in Linguistics. He then did an MA in Classics at Rutgers University in New Jersey, in which he performed “spectacularly” on the General Exams, to use the Chair’s own words....

Hank’s entire career has been devoted to scholarly writing and teaching.  At Harvard College his undergrad history thesis won a competitive Hoopes Prize.  He earned his PhD at the University of Chicago, and won a postdoctoral fellowship at Duke.  He taught for four years in the history...

Helena was born in New York City and then raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. Raised by parents who are both teachers (at the high school she attended, no less), she has been engaged with reading, writing, and education quite literally since she can remember. She studied at Columbia University...

James is a fourth year Ph.D. candidate in classical philosophy in the Harvard Department of the Classics. He graduated from Emory University (B.A.’s in classics and in philosophy) summa cum laude and with a perfect GPA. At Emory, he directed the college’s departmental philosophy club for three...

Jeb grew up on a beautiful, bucolic island near Seattle. Long commutes into the city to attend school gave him ample time to read and write, and he became a lover of books and developed an interest in English grammar and language at an early age. He received his B.A. in international relations...

Jimmy is a J.D./Ph.D. student (Sociology & Social Policy) at Harvard University. Originally from Los Angeles, Jimmy graduated from Harvard College, magna cum laude, in 2014 with a degree in Social Studies and English. Following graduation, he spent a year doing political research for David...

Jocelyn studied English at Duke University, graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. At Duke, she received the Robertson Scholarship, a 4-year full-ride merit scholarship and was awarded the university’s Griffith Award for Global Service. Her thesis on religious narratives at the...

Julia grew up in New York City and attended Princeton University, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude in 2008. After college, she worked in Sub-Saharan Africa to improve access to healthcare in rural communities. She went on to Harvard Medical School and is currently...

Born and raised in England, Karen went globe-trotting in her late teens through her early twenties, working at a variety of jobs (chambermaid, waitress, camp site assistant, flight attendant, van driver) in settings as far afield as Wales, Italy, Israel, Spain, Greece, and the United States. ...

When she was ten years old, Katherine’s dad took her to her first poetry reading, where she read a poem about a pine tree and another poem about a bully at school. She has been writing ever since, and she still enjoys giving poetry readings.

Katherine studied English at Macalester College...

People listening to Lana speak Spanish say that she sounds like a native, but they have a hard time placing the country. They’re always surprised to hear: “Alabama.” Born in Birmingham, Lana attended Washington University in St. Louis for an undergraduate major in International and Area Studies...

Margaret graduated with distinction from Stanford University with a BA in human biology. She was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa upon graduation and honored with a Firestone Medal for a distinguished undergraduate thesis in the social sciences. She then spent two years at the University of Oxford...

Molly was born to Texan parents, but grew up near Boston, MA (she’s still trying to find good Tex-Mex in Boston). She attended Harvard College, where she studied History and Literature and Social Anthropology. Her interests in international studies and human rights led her to focus on the Middle...

Nell is a born and bred New Yorker who spent her formative years in Prospect Park. She attended Wesleyan University where she double-majored in Art History and English (Creative Writing). While at Wesleyan, Nell was a member of the Women’s Varsity Squash Team, elected Captain her Senior year,...

Nora has a BA (honors) in linguistics from University College London and an MS and PhD in cognitive psychology from Rutgers University. Nora completed a postdoctoral fellowship in literacy education at New York University’s Steinhardt School. For this position, she worked closely with NYC...

Parker grew up in Asheville, NC. He attended Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, where he studied anthropology and literature, edited the Bard Papers, and received the Heinrich Blücher Prize for excellence in scholarship. Between 2014 and 2015, he was a Fulbright-García Robles scholar in...

At the beginning of his undergraduate education at the Eastman School of Music, Peter would spend hours in the practice room working on excerpts of Richard Wagner’s operas and other pieces in the German canon. While this was certainly musically rewarding, he found himself increasingly interested...

Rachel is a tried-and-true Boston transplant. She studied biology as a full-tuition merit scholar at Thiel College, a private liberal arts college that is buried under Pennsylvania snow most of the year. She then earned her Master of Public Health in Epidemiology as a merit scholar at Boston...

Rebecca was raised in the woods of North Carolina, where she learned to love both reading and climbing trees. Rebecca received her A.B. from Harvard, where she designed an independent major in drama and literature and graduated with high honors. Her senior thesis won a Thomas T. Hoopes prize,...

A true Manhattanite from head to toe, Sam attended Horace Mann High School before emigrating, in a fit of wanderlust and questionable judgment, to Ireland to enroll in the English Department of Trinity College Dublin. At Trinity, he earned honors and had his poetry and prose published in a...

In sixth grade, Sara finally finished her first novel, The Clamorous Medium. Since then, she has thankfully learned to write without a thesaurus. Sara graduated summa cum laude from the University of Southern California, where she studied English Literature and Political Science as a Trustee...

Shayna has lived in Montreal, Mumbai, Istanbul, Jerusalem and London—but considers herself a New Yorker at heart. She attended University of Michigan, majoring in Arts & Ideas in the Humanities and Creative Writing and graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. After a few years of...

Shyam grew up in Los Angeles, and completed his undergraduate degree in Neurobiology at Washington University in St. Louis. While at Wash U, he conducted research on the role of serotonin signaling in early brain development, and served on the university’s Board of Trustees. He graduated magna...

Susan Chambers is from the South, but she now lives in Hackney, London. She went to high school in Florida, earning the I.B. diploma and graduating first in her class.  She then studied English at Rice, in Texas, graduating summa cum laude and picking up the nickname Lady Geddes for winning the...

Terry is from revolutionary Lexington, Massachusetts, where he grew up marching in parades as a minuteman until he was old enough to think better of it. He attended Amherst College, where he graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with degrees in English and French. His thesis on medieval...

Tess is a true Upper Westsider with no plans to leave. She attended Trinity School and then moved north to attend Columbia University, where she majored in English and fenced for the varsity team. After spending a few years working at the Kinetix Group she has returned to Columbia as an MBA...

Hailing from Chicago, Tova attended the University of Chicago and graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a BA in anthropology. She recently completed her MPhil (with Merit) at the University of Cambridge where she studied Archaeology, with work spanning from theoretical anthropology to archaeobotany....

Zoe grew up in the bustling metropolis of Los Angeles, California. She attended Vassar College  where she graduated after four years with a degree with honors in Science, Technology, and Society.  While at Vassar, Zoe was a member and captain of the Varsity Swim Team for all four years.  She was...