This is a short page, because there isn't very much to tell about me. I was born and raised in New York City and my first exposure to things Iberian came when I started studying flamenco and classical Spanish dance in junior high school. I spent a summer studying in Madrid in 1994, fell in love with Spain, and have tried to get back whenever possible, either physically or in spirit through writing novels. (I also majored in Spanish language and literature as an undergraduate at Columbia University, and try to keep up with the Spanish department there.) I generally make it to the north of Spain in the summers, to the wonderful Semana Negra de Gijón, a festival celebrating all things related to mystery novels, and its offshoot the Celsius 232, in neighboring Avilés, which is devoted to fantasy and science fiction.
I'm a graduate of New York City's much maligned public school system. I taught English and Journalism at the High School for Enterprise, Business, and Technology in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn from 2000 to 2011, when I wrote all four of the Tejada novels. I also taught Spanish there for two years. From 2011 to 2013 I was a college advisor and English teacher at the High School for Service and Learning at Erasmus Hall, in Flatbush, Brooklyn.
In September 2013 I returned to Columbia, this time to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and I received a PhD in English and Comparative Literature in May 2020. (I have the minor distinction of defending my dissertation on Zoom at almost the exact height of the Covid-19 pandemic in New York City. So that date is easy to remember that way.)
My dissertation focuses on African American writers like Langston Hughes who visited and wrote about Spain, and I got to spend the academic year of 2017-2018 living in Madrid and doing archival research there. I'm very tempted to turn the blog I kept while living there into a book as well.
