About Me

I’ve been obsessed with Ancient Rome since my first Latin class in the seventh grade. There were so many mysteries, so many things we didn’t know. In particular, I was interested in learning more about the women, the poor, the slaves, and others whose voices were lost to time. I scored better on my Latin SAT II than I did on my English. I won the silver medal in the Junior Classics League’s Nation Latin Examination, and I won a writing contest that the University of Monmouth ran with a piece about Cicero. One would think, then, that studying Classics or Ancient History would have been an obvious choice for me, but being the first in my family to attend college, nothing was obvious at all. It wasn’t until much later that I studied history in grad school at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

I focused my studies at UMass on biography, book history, and history communication, because I wanted to share history with others, to make it accessible, enjoyable, and even entertaining to everyone, no matter their background or education level. My master’s thesis focused on a man named Otto Ege, whose controversial claim to fame was cutting apart medieval manuscripts in order to make them more accessible to the public. Was he successful in that goal? Or did he just make money from these leaves which became scattered on the wind? You can find the answer in my thesis itself—it, unlike many of Ege’s medieval manuscripts, is open access and available for anyone to read.

Now, I am writing articles and creating other content about Ancient Rome, as well as working on a non-fiction book project about a subject that has consumed me since the 10th grade. You can subscribe to my Substack to get updates and exclusive content for paid subscribers!