I am a writer and teacher living in Groningen, the Netherlands, where I am an assistant professor of English at the University of Groningen. In my research, I work at the intersections of modern and contemporary US, transnational American, and global literatures, with specializations in diasporic fiction, the contemporary Gothic, and children's and YA literature.

I am the author of three academic books: Intersecting Diasporas (SUNY Press, 2021); Uncanny Youth: Childhood, the Gothic, and the Literary Americas (University of Wales Press, 2022); and They Also Write for Kids (University Press of Mississippi, 2023). 

I also write creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry; my poems have appeared in journals including Colorado Review, New Letters, Poetry Northwest, Third Coast, and Verse Daily, and my prose writing has appeared or is forthcoming in magazines including Bellingham Review, Burnside Review, Gone Lawn, The Journal, The Pinch, and South Dakota Review. My first full-length poetry collection, Ghost Family, is forthcoming from Contraband Books. My second, Sicilianas, won the 2022 Lauria/Frasca Poetry Prize and will be published by Bordighera Press.

Originally from rural northeastern Connecticut, I lived for eight years in New York City with short stints in Palo Alto and Hoboken, NJ before moving to Long Beach, CA and then to Irvine and Riverside. While in school, I worked a series of jobs as a caterer's helper, a waitress, a short-order cook, an office assistant, a barista, a tutor, and a copyeditor.

I started teaching college students in NYC in 2011; in 2015, while adjuncting at CSU San Bernardino and Occidental College, I finished my MFA in creative writing from the University of California, Irvine and my PhD in comparative literature from Yale. Today I live in Groningen with my family. At the RUG, I teach undergraduate and graduate courses in literature and creative writing.