Stephanie
Tutor and College Admissions Essay Coach

I’m a retired tenured English professor and award-winning fiction and nonfiction writer. I’ve taught creative writing and literature at Franklin & Marshall, University of Pennsylvania, Haverford College, and most recently, College of the Holy Cross for the past fifteen years. I love helping students become more confident writers by discovering what’s important to them and learning the writing techniques to tell their stories and convey their ideas in the most compelling ways possible. 

My goal in my work with students is to help them become gutsy and patient writers, two adjectives that may not seem to go together, but do. I want students to understand that first drafts require bravery. Writing, whether creative or analytical, often starts from a place of not-knowing. We learn what we’re trying to say through the surprising way that meaning accrues word by word, sentence by sentence. Sometimes we get stuck. Sometimes we hate what we’ve written. But that’s okay because writing is also a process that requires patience. Many students who don’t see themselves as strong writers labor under the misconception that good writers magically, and effortlessly, produce masterpieces, but that’s mostly not true (except perhaps if you’re Stephen King or Joyce Carole Oates)! Instead, writing is a process of brainstorming, drafting, revising, and polishing that helps writers of all abilities move from the inkling of an idea to a finished piece of work. The process gives us opportunities to make mistakes (which we all do!) and then get back on course. 

I’ve published two books (a story collection and a hybrid work of memoir and literary criticism about my obsessions with Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian) and I’ve won lots of awards: a Stegner Fellowship, a Rhodes Scholarship, and two O. Henry prizes for my short stories. I graduated from Amherst College, received a second BA from Oxford University, and received my MFA from University of Arizona. I love teaching, and now that I’m no longer an academic, I’m excited about the opportunity to work one-on-one with younger students with big ideas and unbridled imaginations.

Finally, I have lots of experience coaching students through application writing. As a college professor, I served as an advisor to students applying for prestigious fellowships, like the Fulbright, Marshall, and Rhodes, and as a Rhodes Scholar alum, I have been on the other side of the admissions process, serving on state selection committees and reading and evaluating hundreds of essays from college seniors applying for the fellowship.