“I believe it’s possible for someone with no formal musical education to be thrilled by even the most dense and supposedly inaccessible music. I have a fantasy in which I lock one of my best childhood friends – an imaginative…
Last spring I was surprised and honored to be chosen as the winner of the first annual Beltran Family Award for Innovative Teaching & Mentoring at at Penn. The award came with the opportunity to host a program at Kelly…
This essay appeared first, in slightly shorter form, in the Philadelphia Inquirer on December 2, 2012. Me, I want to be a natural. I want to show up at the first class and discover I have a knack for whatever…
I’d been through a high-stress job, un-anesthetized childbirth, and a couple of car crashes. And let me tell you, going to Music Prep with my kids was worse. Every Saturday I brought headphones and a stack of paperwork to the…
In addition to asking for titles of books on writing, my fiction-hungry students wanted a list of short story collections to read over the winter holiday. I certainly have my own favorites, but I also put out a call for…
It’s the end of the semester, and my Advanced Fiction Workshop wants a list of books on writing to carry them through the holidays and beyond. I put out a question on Facebook and got a wonderful collection of responses from…
Is it a film about a movie or a movie about a film? This is the kind of conundrum that rose in my wandering mind as I struggled to stay awake in the chilly theater. What does the fat suit…
Three “creatures” from Madeline Rile Smith’s Arthropod series will appear in the annual juried show at Abington Arts Center. The show, which runs from December 8 – January 27, will have an opening reception on Saturday, December 8 from 3-5…
This morning Hacker News picked up an essay I wrote for the Philadelphia Inquirer about the accidental benefits of Suzuki violin training— and a life of practicing. An accidental perk of this internet collision was a flood of emails from all…
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