Penning Poetry, Lyrics, and Prose
I have loved words and stories for as long as I can remember. A voracious reader for most of my life, I have long enjoyed leaping into the world of a great tale. I like wordplay, am fluent in Spanish, proficient in Italian, and have taken courses in Hebrew and French.
I have written poetry, essays, short stories, and songs since I learned to read and write, and one of my majors at UC Berkeley was English (the other, music), my Master’s from USC’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism (where I co-founded what is now the award-winning Annenberg Digital News and won the Director’s Award for Excellence and Carnegie- and Knight Foundations News 21 Multimedia Reporting Fellowship) was multimedia journalism.
I interned at Los Angeles Magazine and New America Media, have written for The Huffington Post, Berkeley Poetry Review, Buzzfeed, the Sacramento Bee, La Opinion, The News & Observer, Beliefnet, Ravishly, The Hogwarts Professor, Spot.Us, Our Weekly, Vocal and Medium media, and Anglofiles, among others, and worked at the Los Angeles Times before transitioning to full-time teaching of English and student Journalism (though I never stopped freelancing). Others have cited my articles in their academic pieces, doing so through Academia.edu and otherwise.
As a reporter, I enjoyed covering religion, education, and the arts and have a passion for OpEd, arts criticism, and the long form and meditative essay. I often write about nostalgia and the passage of time, music, film, and things folkloric.
For the the Fall 2022 edition of Pedagogy and Profession, I wrote and published “Teaching Chaucer from the Perspective of a Troubadour and Using Music in the Classroom to Further Explain Literature,” an academic paper and personal essay’s explaining my use of music in the English classroom and teaching literature and writing through music. It also includes links to the music I wrote to accompany my teaching of literature and that I discuss in this work. I have written about Judaism, women, joy, and magic for At the Well.
I really enjoy editing others’ work and recently served as a peer-reviewer for Literature Compass in addition to doing so on a contract-basis.
Of the songs I have released since 2020, 85 share lyrics I have penned, and I take great pride in the storytelling in those pieces.
I have further writing education from Cambridge University, UCLA, and Bard College and am grateful to have had the mentorship of talented educators and writers.
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Here are two, course descriptions I wrote for classes I taught in various iterations and schools. The UC (University of California) System used the first’s, “Myth, Magic, and Folklore in Literature” (one I wrote in 2013), on its Web site as an example of how to write about a class.
Fall 2013; Spring 2014; Fall 2018: “Myth, Magic, and Folklore in Literature”: Some believe that simply because books portray magic or because they line certain shelves of libraries and bookshops, they must cease to have relevance for those who have passed a certain age. That is a misconception. “Children’s” and “Young Adult” novels reveal characters of great depth and memorable complexity. The literature—for literature it is—within that genre quite often provides neat, poignant prose, reveals a series of earnest existential Truths, and includes ideas that provoke thought and yield rich discourse. Many of these books offer a narrative arc familiar to us, one that follows the “Hero’s Journey,” while others stray from that paradigm. But even those remaining consistent with that narrative framework invite readers into different worlds--worlds that operate by their own laws and that have their own histories, worlds as frightening and dangerous as they are captivating. At their best, young adult novels may grant the reader both an escape and a mirror. This course seeks to discuss such novels through a look at that dual capability, through the lens of Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth, through an exploration of these books’ frequent interpretations of and allusions to folklore and fairy tales, and through an examination of just how or why these stories can so draw us in, compelling us to read them again and again, wondering anew just why they move us so deeply.
Written and first taught Fall 2019; Fall 2020 (remotely): “Heroes: Lady Heroes in Legend and Lore”: How we experience stories depends on much – the characters, the arc, the content. But it also rests on who tells the story and the lens through which that person experiences the goings-on of those tales. For millennia, most Stories have centered around men: men have sung them; men have told them; men have populated them. Prose-men have cried from the rooftops and filled pages of the great and not-so-great deeds of the male heroes of Our World(s). Yet no hero sprang from Nothing. This course will read myths, epics, and fantasy novels from the perspectives of the heroes who are women – the heroines, the “sheroes.” Read about the Trojan War from Helen’s and Cassandra’s perspectives. Hear about the Odyssean Yearning for Home as Circe. King Arthur’s impressive, but what about his sister, Morgan le Fey? Women have slain dragons for a long time: let’s read and write about the Lady Dragonslayers and maybe even write some stories of our own.
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This is a dystopian, science fiction story of social commentary I wrote in 2019 and published in 2021. I originally created it for the NYC Flash Fiction challenge: 1,000 words in 48 hours in the science fiction genre using a machete as an object and pet shop as a setting. It’s called “Operation Pet Shop”.
I continue to both attend and lead writing workshops and have written several manuscripts — of lyrics, poetry, short stories, and essays — and am always jotting ideas down in sundry journals and notes for later.