I graduated from college on skis. Well, to be fair, I was in a sled pulled by a patroller, but my Middlebury College classmates and I all came down the mountain in caps and gowns to celebrate our mid-year commencement. Despite a torn ACL, I wasn't going to miss out on the fun.
I'd planned to be a ski instructor in the Rocky Mountains after graduation. The knee injury thwarted that plan, but I still moved West. With degrees in English/Creative Writing and French, I taught high school English and Journalism while also working to rehab my knee. Two years later, I was finally ready to start my dream job as a ski instructor. My health had other plans.
The rest of that story unfolds in One Tick Stopped the Clock, but it would be many years before I began writing the memoir. During my convalescence from tick-borne and other chronic illness in my twenties, I turned to writing as an outlet, though I wasn't yet ready to process my health journey because I was still living it. I needed an escape to a happier time, a reminder that I had once been an energetic person. I started jotting down memories from my semester studying in Paris, emailing them to friends to share some laughs. Some days my joints hurt too much to hold a pen, or I couldn't type more than a few lines without succumbing to brain fog. Painstakingly but joyously, the Paris anecdotes eventually became chapters, which ultimately became my first book, Et Voilá: One Traveler's Journey from Foreigner to Francophile (Belfort & Bastion, 2015).
While Et Voilà was written in the isolation of illness, I began One Tick Stopped the Clock in community while earning my M.F.A. in Creative Writing at Emerson College. At last healthy enough to be living rather than simply surviving, I gained the capacity and perspective to write about my medical trajectory. My work has since been published in or on The Boston Globe, Aeon’s Psyche, wbur’s Cognoscenti, Harvard Health Blog, poetryandcovid.com, boston.com, (T)here: Musings on Returnings (Martlet and Mare, 2014), Spry Literary Journal, The Lyme Times, and lymedisease.org. My story has been featured in anthologies and other books, I have been interviewed for CBS news and for articles in Undark and Experience Life, and I have spoken on podcasts and webinars as both a Lyme and COVID-19 long hauler. Since 2013, I’ve published a weekly column for the Global Lyme Alliance, which has received mention in The New Yorker and CQ Researcher and on cbs.com, weatherchannel.com and prohealth.com. I am now a Senior Writer at Harvard Health Publishing, where I was also the Patient Experience Representative for the Lyme Wellness Initiative.
For almost a decade, I’ve been teaching at Grub Street Creative Writing Center in Boston, where I created the Writing to Heal Immersive Program and lead other non-fiction classes. I’ve also taught Writing to Heal as a Winter Term course at my alma mater, Middlebury College, as well as at the graduate level at Lesley University. I have presented at the Boston Book Festival and as part of the Cape Cod Writers Center Writers Night Out. In addition to my B.A. and M.F.A. degrees, I have completed a summer of study at the Bread Loaf School of English and a Workshop in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University.
Following the tradition of many writers before me, I now call Concord, MA home. When I’m not writing or teaching you can find me skiing at local mountains, paddleboarding at Walden Pond, or enjoying chocolate mousse bites at Debra’s Natural Gourmet.
