I am a writer and cultural critic. My debut narrative nonfiction book The Sun Won’t Come Out Tomorrow: The Real History of American Orphanhood will be published by Bold Type Books in winter 2025. In it, I combine memoir, social history, and analysis to deconstruct America’s obsession with fictional orphan stories and reflect on the gap between these myths and the lived experiences of dependent children from the 1800s to the present day.

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, our cats Suzy Creamcheese and Dougie Jones, and our Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Penny Loafer. Kiwi Cat forever.