teacher, writer, poet
Raised in Brooklyn, Francesca is a graduate of Saint Ann’s school, Pomona College, and Trinity College Dublin, where she was awarded the Constantina Maxwell scholarship. Her undergraduate thesis focused on female agency within Nabokov’s Lolita, and she has written about the novel for several publications. Francesca has been teaching and tutoring for over seven years, and she is passionate about helping students find a sense of wonder in reading challenging texts and solving complicated math problems. Francesca is also a poet and fiction writer, and her debut novel will be published in the fall of 2023. She is passionate about queer issues and has a dog named Lyra.
I recently taught Pet by Akwaeke Emezi and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley as novels in conversation. Both books ask us to consider what is monstrous, and how society plays a role in the creation–and subsequent rejection–of monsters. They also explore the horrors hidden within families, the complexities of parenthood and birth, the construction and socialization of gender, and modes and models of justice.
I wake up every morning and wish I was in Dublin.
Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison, Jason Reynolds, Mae Martin, Natalie Diaz, Tracy Chapman, James Baldwin, and Ocean Vuong. Then I’d probably get anxious and leave the room.
Whether it’s possible to attain gender equality and justice within sports. Can we create an athletic system that doesn’t rely on a gender binary? What would that look like?
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