I was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York though in first grade I had the alarming habit of telling my classmates I was British. The shape of things to come perhaps? I also decided in first grade that I wanted to teach when I grew up. While I’m still waiting to grow up, I have been teaching a variety of subjects for almost twenty years at area universities.

I am passionate about my family, my friends, writing, literature, Great Britain, the eighteenth century, traveling – especially to cold dark places, music, coffee, John Dunton, artichokes, good wine, good cinema, live theatre, Christopher Marlowe, Tom Stoppard, fresh bread, a good cup of tea, chocolate digestive biscuits, fountain pens, Odin, snowy days, and a never to be attained quest for order and simplicity.

If I were not teaching and writing I would either be a chef or a horticulturalist – anything concerned with the growing, preparing and eating of good foods.