I am a writer and cultural critic. My debut narrative nonfiction book The Sun Won’t Come Out Tomorrow: The Dark History of American Orphanhood will be published by Bold Type Books on January 21, 2025.

My writing has been published in The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, NPR, Lapham’s Quarterly, The Believer, The Baffler, and elsewhere. I am a member of the National Book Critics Circle and the Freelance Solidarity Project.

I received an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University, and am a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the Università degli Scienze Gastronomiche in Italy, where I was a Fulbright-Casten Family Scholar. My work has been supported by residencies at Yaddo and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. I have taught writing at the University of Pennsylvania, New York University, Columbia University, and CUNY Baruch College, as well as for the Philadelphia literary community Blue Stoop.

I live in Philadelphia with my husband and our pets.