A faerie folklorist, a writing witch, and a sorceress scholar born under the indecisive skies of a cool November night in northern Virginia, I am the co-founder and co-headmistress of The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic, an online school where we teach creative souls how to re-enchant their lives through folklore and fairy tales. I received my PhD in English and Folklore at The Ohio State University and have also lived in Florida, just outside of New York City (my favorite place in the world) when I was an undergraduate at Sarah Lawrence College, California, and northern Virginia again to complete my MA degree in Interdisciplinary Studies: Folklore at George Mason University. I was also lucky enough to be able to live and study abroad in Oxford, UK and Galway, Ireland
Folk narrative is my passion and almost always the chief inspiration behind the creative writing and academic work that I do. I research and write about fairy tales, legends, myths, folk tales, and supernatural folklore broadly speaking (especially conceptions of magic and fairylore/witch lore.) I am also fascinated by retellings and reimaginings of these materials, both writing them myself and researching them, speculative literature of all kinds (especially the Gothic and Fantastic), nineteenth-century literature, feminist and queer theory, fashion, experimental literature, and digital media, particularly creative digital composing.
My family and I are very close. I laugh way too hard at bad puns. I have three kitten familiars and a changeling of a boyfriend. I’m a very typical Scorpio, an unapologetic geek, a bit too introverted for my own good, an animal lover, and a huge believer in the magic beneath the mundane. I perpetually have ink on my fingers and a book in my hands.
FIVE FAVORITES:
Books – The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern, The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle,
The Orphan’s Tales Duology by Catherynne M. Valente, The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter,
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, The Strange the Dreamer Duology by Laini Taylor
Musicians – Florence and the Machine, Patrick Wolf, Within Temptation, Poe, Loreena McKennitt
Films – Sleeping Beauty, Only Lovers Left Alive, Whisper of the Heart, Romeo + Juliet, Some Like It Hot
Fairy Tales – “Sleeping Beauty,” “Jorinde and Joringel,” “Kisa the Cat,” “The Witch in the Woods,”
“The White Cat”