Background

I came to New York to study acting with Uta Hagen. After working as an actor for a decade, commercial and even play scripts often felt like buoys I had to steer past, above an ocean of inner life. I wanted to swim in that ocean. I wrote and performed a one-woman show that segued me into full-time writing. I have been jackknifing in the deep end ever since. I now teach writing to people of all ages. My theatre background helps me help clients find and use their real voices to tackle all subjects.

Why choose me?

Good writing is like good acting: the result of unfettered organic investigation. Personal writing calls for commitment to the truth, to one’s deepest instincts, to taking those risks that reap unimaginable rewards. Does this sound a little highfalutin for college essay coaching? Nothing could be more important than playing this high-stakes game to the fullest. The essay is the odds breaker—the element that can beat higher GPAs and get you through the gate.

The college essay is your teen’s three-minute audition monologue. If you want them to be cast in a top college, the essay must be strong, brave, and have enough at stake to capture the attention of admissions committees. I have the ability to gain teenagers’ trust, to give them the confidence, encouragement, and good old plain permission to pull stunning essay topics out of their sleeves and onto the page, where I then help them apply the same principles I would apply to a poem or story: clarity, economy, crisp punctuation, well chosen images.

In my tutoring sessions, I use the technique of freewriting as a composition staple: freewriting focuses the mind and is helpful in breaking bad habits and producing genuine writing. It also gives students the immediate gratification of seeing something on the page. Next, they build an essay, paragraph by excellent paragraph. My goal is to foster passion, curiosity, perseverance, and ultimately, freedom. My students discover writing as a universe of choices. They become aware of their own power.