Alumni News

Where did you live/work before coming to Western? 

I lived in a place called City Heights / Normal Heights in San Diego, CA. I worked as a staff member at UC San Diego for their First Year Experience and Transfer Year Experience programs. 

What is your area of specialty?

There are lots of things I like to talk about with students, including: first-year student transitions, transfer student transitions, first-generation student transitions, creative writing practice, poetry, fiction, speculative fiction, humor writing, standup comedy, submitting work for publication, graduate school preparation, and graduate school survival. I also love talking with other teachers about their work and pedagogical approaches; I find I learn a lot about teaching that way. 

What do you like so far about being at Western?

I find the student body to be very open-minded, compassionate with their peers, and willing to push their creativity. I’ve also found my colleagues to be wonderful, as teachers, writers, leaders and people. 

What stirs joy within you outside of your work?

My two young daughters drawing tattoos on me with markers (so long as it’s not on my face). Creative collaboration. NBA banter. 

What is your secret “superpower”?  Tell us something that others may not know about you. 

I have a pretty poor memory, generally-speaking, but I find my memory for people’s favorite music and snacks to be pretty decent. For example, I remember my sister’s high school boyfriend loved to eat water chestnuts. I think he told me that about 27 years ago. 

Where did you live/work before coming to Western? 

Argentine writer Juan José Saer said that the best biography of a person is a list of the places they’ve lived. Here is mine: Alabama, Iowa, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Alabama, Mexico City, Los Angeles, Paris, Los Angeles, Riverside, Bellingham, Tulsa, Bellingham. 

What is your area of specialty? 

My current research project looks at French and English translations of Peruvian historian Inca Garcilaso de la Vega’s La Florida del Inca (1605), a history of Hernando de Soto’s invasion of Florida in the sixteenth century. For Garcilaso and his translators, translation included acts of writing, spoken interpretation, illustration, collecting, map-making, movement, reenactment, and object transfer. My broader interests include literatures and cultures of the early American hemisphere, transatlantic studies, and early modern histories and cultures of translation.

What do you like so far about being at Western?

Witnessing students in conversation with each other is what I like best so far. Students at Western stand out to me for their deep capacity to care for each other, support each other’s work, and build community together. I’m also very grateful for my colleagues in the English department, the arboretum, the rec center pool, and everyone who keeps the library running. 

What stirs joy within you outside of your work?

The seasons in and around Bellingham are so subtle and so dramatic at the same time. I love the long darkness of winter, the arrival of the first tiny buds in February, and the bursting fir tips in spring. 

What is your secret “superpower”? Tell us something that others may not know about you. 

I lived in the Riverside, California while my wife was finishing her PhD in Geology, and I learned to wash all the dishes with a very small amount of water in her burning hot kitchen.