Thomas Amaro '09
Hometown: Shreveport, LA
Major: Accounting
Interests: Philosophy, poetry, and psychology
“Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old-fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he'll eventually make some kind of career for himself as writer.” -Ray Bradbury

Audrey Anyaele '09
Hometown: North Plainfield, NJ
Majors: Finance & Management
Interests: Music, writing, Grey's Anatomy, my family and friends, and anything else that can keep me entertained for long periods of time.
"Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it, and above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light." -Joseph Pulitzer

Sean Boocock '08
Hometown: Mesa, AZ
Majors: Physics & Mathematics
Interests: Cooking new and delicious vegan meals, running long distances, philosophy in general, atheism in particular, food and drink of all kinds, science fiction of the heady sort, music except pop country, tweaking computers, fixing them when I inevitably break them, movies that ask questions, books that seem to offer answers, and a little quiet time everyday
“There is a muse, but he’s not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter creative fairy-dust all over your typewriter or computer station. He lives in the ground. He’s a basement guy. You have to descend to his level, and once you get down there you have to furnish an apartment for him to live in. You have to do all the grunt work, in other words, while the muse sits and smokes cigars and admire his bowling trophies and pretends to ignore you. Do you think this is fair? I think it’s fair…It’s right that you should do all the work and burn all the midnight oil, because the guy with the cigar and the little wings has got a bag of magic. There’s stuff in there that can change your life.” -Stephen King

Ashley Chow '09
Hometown: Nashua, NH
Majors: English & Government
Interests: Running, reading and writing, hiking, cooking and baking, Native American studies
"Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart." -William Wordsworth

Katherine Conaty '08
Hometown: Kenilworth, IL
Majors: English & Art History, Minor: History
Interests: 20th Century literature, museum studies, music, travel, the White Sox, Faulkner
“The artist, like the God of creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.” – James Joyce (A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man)
“The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one... If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ is worth any number of old ladies.” -William Faulkner

Daniel Cook '10
Hometown: Los Altos, CA
Majors: English & American Musical Culture
Interests: WGTB, The Voice, Georgetown Basketball. And nothing else.
“Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade, just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.” -Truman Capote
“An author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother who talks about her own children.” -Benjamin Disraeli

Nicole Cramer '08
Hometown: New York City, NY
Major: French
Interests: Language, travel, social justice, playing at Hoya Kids, H*yas for Choice, family, friends, LOST, Weeds, Top Chef, 80s night at Tombs, watching and playing sports, shopping, art projects, learning something new but only if I find it interesting...
"Literature was not born the day a boy crying 'wolf, wolf' came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels: Literature was born on the day a boy came crying 'wolf, wolf,' and there was no wolf behind him." -Vladimir Nabokov

Joshua Dillon '09
Hometown: Chambersburg, PA
Majors: English & Theology
Interests: Reading, writing, words, running, movies, the outdoors, ethics, cooking, sleeping in, staying up late watching movies on the Sci-Fi channel, German language and culture, pop culture, High School Musical (1 & 2)
"How do I know what I think until I see what I say?" -E.M. Forster
"Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
"How vain it is to sit down to write if you have not stood up to live."
-Henry David Thoreau

Grace Erdmann '10
Hometown: Richmond, VA
Majors: English & Theology
Interests: Traveling, movies, French, theater, playing the piano, golf, linguistics
"I have made this letter longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter." -Blaise Pascal

Amy Filsinger '09
Hometown: Crescent City, CA
Majors: International Politics & International Development
Interests: Novels, nature documentaries, NPR, research, International Law, singing, maximizing free time
"Write while the heat is in you." -Henry David Thoreau

Alexander Fumelli '08
Hometown: Smithtown, NY
Major: Government; Minors: French & Psychology
Interests: Con law, journalism, movies, baseball
"For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can." -Ernest Hemingway

Alejandra Fuster '10
Hometown: Damascus, MD
Majors: English & Economics
Interests: Fashion, magazines, reading fashion magazines, media, music and running
“Writing has nothing to do with communication between person and person, only with communication between different parts of a person's mind.” -Rebecca West

Timothy Hance '08
Hometown: Los Angeles, CA
Major: English
Interests: Sports, sports business and marketing, the beach, surfing, friends and family, a good book, just having fun
"Writing well means never having to say, 'I guess you had to be there." -Jef Mallet

Kate Mays '10
Hometown: Ridgefield, CT
Majors: English & American Studies
Interests: The New Yorker, doing (yet never finishing) crosswords, short stories, and riding my bicycle
"When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand."
-Raymond Chandler

Charlotte Myer '09
Hometown: Wichita, KS
Major: English
Interests: Coffee, reading, Georgetown Basketball, travel, tennis, Indian food, Grey's Anatomy
"Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very'; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be." -Mark Twain

Craig Nadler '10
Hometown: Briarcliff Manor, NY
Majors: English, Minor: Linguistics
Interests: Tennis, pop culture, the Food Network, phonetic transcriptions
"It is impossible to discourage the real writers - they don't give a damn what you say, they're going to write."
-Sinclair Lewis

Jeffrey Reger '10
Hometown: Shrewsbury, NJ
Majors: Culture & Politics
Interests: Film, Arabic, The New York Times, creating/enjoying music
“I don’t call myself a poet because I don’t like the word. I’m a trapeze artist.” -Bob Dylan

Emma Snoyer '09
Hometown: Dallas, TX
Major: English
Interests: My family, holidays, picnics, The Office, visiting museums, gelato, singing, fall foliage, travel
“If any man wish to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts; and if any would write in a noble style, let him first possess a noble soul.”-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Jackie Stanley ‘09
Hometown: Oswego, NY
Major: English, Minor: Justice and Peace Studies
Interests:Politics/Government, Sports, Food Network, Ireland, and 90s Tunes
"A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." -Thomas Mann

Ana Thomas '08
Hometown: Clearwater, FL
Major: Government
Interests: Running, boats, puns, Spanglish, books, new places, words, people who use good words well
"If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or how badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something." -Kurt Vonnegut

Bryan Toporek '09
Hometown: King of Prussia, PA
Major: English, Linguistics, Minor: Inter-arts
Interests: Hoya Basketball, any Philadelphia sports team, any and all drums/percussion, and finding a get-rich-quick scheme that leads to extremely early retirement
“Writing is the hardest work in the world. I have been a bricklayer and a truck driver, and I tell you – as if you haven't been told a million times already – that writing is harder. Lonelier. And nobler and more enriching.” -Harlan Ellison

Rose Townsend '08
Hometown: Towson, MD
Major: History
Interests: Running, biking, climbing, camping, politics, IT, oil, drug companies, ice cream
"All that’s said has been said before and better but I have been able to support a family by saying it again and saying it worse.” -Ogden Nash

Nicole Escuardo '08
Nicole is a second year English MA student at Georgetown. Last year, she worked as a teaching assistant for Humanities and Writing 011. Her interests include Irish literature, 20th century and contemporary British fiction, and the teaching of writing. Nicole received her BA in English from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2005.

Bridget Harrington '08
Bridget is a second year student in the English MA program. She was a teaching assistant for two freshman courses last year at Georgetown. Her interests include 19th and 20th century British literature, post-feminist theory, and popular fiction. Bridget graduated in 2005 from the University of Notre Dame.

Lauren Kaczmar '08
Lauren is a second year MA student interested in Victorian literature and colonial studies. Previous to coming to Georgetown, she worked as a writing and grammar instructor at Hartnell Community College in California. A 2005 graduate of Washington University in St. Louis, Lauren holds degrees in English and French literature, with a minor in History.

Mitch Mathias '08
Mitch is a second year English MA student at Georgetown. His academic interests include 19th-century American literature and culture; sexuality studies; and creative writing. Prior to enrolling at Georgetown, Mitch taught and worked at a nonprofit in New York City. He graduated from the College of William and Mary and also advises undergraduate students entering the English major.

Robyn Russo '08
Robyn specializes in tutoring journalism for the Writing Center, as she previously reported for Dow Jones Newswires and The Beaver County (PA) Times and currently continues freelance journalism work. She is a second year student in the English M.A. program, where her academic interests include working-class studies, creative non-fiction, and the teaching of writing. In addition to working at the Writing Center, Robyn works as a Graduate Associate at Georgetown's Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship, and teaches basic writing at Lord Fairfax Community College in Warrenton, Va. She completed her B.A. in English at Georgetown University in 2004.

Mark Kraemer '09
Mark is a first year English MA student at Georgetown. His academic interests include renaissance literature, dystopian fiction, dialogic theory, and teaching writing. A Michigan native, Mark graduated from Saginaw Valley State University with a BA in English, and has tutored extensively as an undergraduate peer-tutor.

Kate Middleton '09
Kate is a first year MA in the English program at Georgetown. She has previously completed a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) and a Bachelor of Music at the University of Melbourne. Her interests include European literary traditions and contemporary poetics. Her poetry has been widely published in journals and newspapers in Australia.

David Weinstein '09
David grew up in Colorado and studied English and Philosophy at Colorado State University. After graduation, he took 3 years off to write a trail-guide book for his home state and teach English in Japan. David's research interests are in Romanticism, nature-writing, and eco-criticism.