About Me
A convert to Catholicism from Anglicanism, I admire the good, the true, and the beautiful and dream of creating music that reflects them, both for the Church and for what St. Augustine called "the little Church"---the Catholic home.
Faith, music, and literature have been part of my life from the beginning. I owe a great debt to my family, for whom these things have always been important. One of my relatives was a Methodist circuit rider in nineteenth-century Illinois. A great-grandmother and grandmother were dedicated church musicians. My mother and her three sisters all received thorough training in classical music; one of my earliest memories is of my mother singing rhymes from Winnie-the-Pooh to her own melodies.
I was born in Detroit and spent my childhood in the Midwest, learning piano, viola, and voice as a schoolgirl in Brookings, South Dakota. Having moved to Rochester, New York, I studied voice in the Preparatory Division of the Eastman School of Music and began taking Russian at Brighton High, the public high school from which I was graduated. (I am not of Russian descent, but fell in love with the culture after reading Anna Karenina in translation during the summer when I was fourteen.) It was at Brighton High that several great teachers inspired me to take poetry seriously both as a reader and as a writer.
I went on to earn degrees from Bryn Mawr College (A.B. in Russian summa cum laude), where I served as director of the Bryn Mawr-Haverford Russian Choir, and Yale University (M.A., M. Phil. in Slavic Languages and Literatures). I am also trained in teaching English to speakers of other languages (certificate from Teachers College, Columbia University).
I live in Fairfield, Connecticut and have a husband and son. When I'm not writing hymns, carols, and other music, I like to sing, play the piano, garden, weave, cook, and learn languages. I am a member of The Parish of St. Catherine of Siena, Trumbull, Connecticut, a faithful and welcoming church; the stunning beauty of the recently refurbished interior has to be seen to be believed. Stop by sometime to see what I mean. The Catholic Church is not a private club, but the sanctuary of God.
