About

I am a lifelong student of Language.

In elementary school, I opted to attend a Chinese after-school program with my friends to learn calligraphy and eat dumplings. I frequently chose to sit with the Mandarin interpreter in the back of the classroom instead of focussing on long division. That early exposure to Chinese opened my world linguistically, culturally, and spiritually.

In middle school, I stumbled into a Russian club meeting. Several years and several hundred bake-sale brownies later, I traveled to Petrozavodsk in the Republic of Karelia. My study of the Russian language has brought me to a practice of writing Byzantine icons.

As an adult, I was able to realize a young dream of learning my ancestral language and began studying Irish online. I spent a month at the Academy of Irish Language Education in the Conamara Gaeltacht and found a home working with the North American Gaeltacht to create more Irish-language immersion experiences.

I am a lifelong martial artist, as well as a student of religion and philosophy. I have studied Taekwondo Jidokwan, Okinawan Shuri Ryu Karate, Filipino Modern Arnis, and most recently Cheng Man Ching Style Taichi Chuan. My study of martial arts has always been a spiritual practice, and my current work within the Long River Taichi Circle has allowed me to marry my expertise in Classical Chinese with my martial arts practice and study of Daoism. I worked with the late Ed Young and continue to work with Wolfe Lowenthal, two of Professor Cheng’s original students in Manhattan, to translate Professor’s work into English.

When I’m not nose-deep in a second language, I’m likely on a long slow run, listening to or making loud music, drinking tea, playing board games with friends, learning to ski, working on some kind of craft project, or hanging out with my cats. I have worked in kitchens and behind counters all of my life to support these interests.

To say I am from any one place feels reductive. I grew up in a rural yet diverse area of western Massachusetts, surrounded by high-level education, but it was through much displacement that my family ended up in New England. I am proud to be Canadian, and spent many summers in Nova Scotia. My family ended up in North America after escaping the Great Hunger in Ireland, living in Griffintown, Montréal, the North End of Halifax, and Brooklyn, New York.

In addition to Massachusetts, I have lived in Washington DC, where I managed a Cognitive Neuroscience of Language Lab, New York City, where I worked as a digital producer at a web and mobile development firm, and New Orleans, where I was a freelance writer. I am very excited to call Montréal my new home.