About Me
I grew up in Davis, California, where I spent an idyllic youth lounging at the pool, soaking up the sun, and daydreaming. I had a key ring that read ‘I’m running away to join the circus,’ and my favorite moment of the day was when the local movie theater went dark, and the slogan escape to the movies appeared on the screen. As an adult, my passions include all things melodramatic and beautiful – everything from classic movies, British romantic poetry, ancient tragedy and epic, to Italian opera. I'm now a professor of Classics in a small midwestern town, where I live with my Greek husband, my fraternal twins, and a Bernese mountain dog named Franco Corelli.
What I do for my "day job" has virtually nothing to do with my writing, except to the extent that what I do all day is essentially tell stories. But for the curious, here's the scoop on my alter-ego/ doppelganger/ through-a-glass-darkly, "by day" persona: I've got a BA in Classics from Pomona College, Claremont (go Sagehens!), and an MA and PhD from the AHMA (Graduate Group in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology) from the University of California at Berkeley. I'm currently a professor of Classics at a public university in the midwest, where I regularly teach a variety of courses in classical languages & literature, and in classical material culture. These include the following: ancient Greek, Latin, Greek mythology, Greco-Roman magic, Greek religion and sanctuaries, Greek art and archaeology, the Topography and Monuments of Athens, Ancient Epic, Greek Tragedy in translation, as well as literature courses in the original languages - there's nothing quite like introducing new students to the thrill of reading Homer in the original!
I've also been fortunate enough to participate in excavations in ancient Corinth and in ancient Nemea, and to conduct field projects of my own in the territory of the ancient city-state of Kleonai. One of the best things I dug up in the process was my husband; he's a native Greek, and he and I regularly pack up our twins and head back to Greece to spend what time we can in the glorious Greek countryside and with our Greek relatives.
