My (far right) co-starring role in Sharknado 2: The Second One (2014)
I'm a New York City-based journalist with print (New York Post) and web (DailyMail.com) experience, who also knows things about PR (Syfy channel) and is currently working on a Popular Fiction Writing and Publishing MFA (Emerson College).
I started my journalism career straight out of college - literally, two weeks after graduation - as a New York Post staffer, splitting my time between the metro news and features departments. After six months, I went full-time features, where I covered everything entertainment, but focused on the music, tech and pop culture beats. (I also logged plenty of TV, books, fashion, beauty, celebrity and film bylines and wrote weekly music and tech columns.) Seven years of features later, I transferred to the TV department where I covered...television...every single day, writing under my own name and the elusive Post Staff Writer byline. When not filing for daily print deadlines, I blogged for the Post Game Report (video games), Hear This (music) and Live (TV) blogs.
After 10 years of print journalism, I moved into PR, working as a communications manager at genre network Syfy (a division of NBCUniversal). During that time, I launched media campaigns for popular series including The Magicians, 12 Monkeys and Z Nation. I also handled press for Ghost Hunters, The Wil Wheaton Project, Joe Rogan Questions Everything and Haven. Perhaps my biggest contribution to pop culture, though, was being part of the two-person PR team who made the Sharknado franchise (movies two, three and four) an annual summer coverage event for journalists. When not frantically BlackBerrying the West Coast at all hours of the day/night, I ran the (now-defunct) PR Team's social media accounts (Twitter: @SyfyPR) and started/managed its Instagram account.
Four years (and two NBCUniversal Going the Extra Mile Awards!) later, I found my way back to journalism, this time on the digital end, with a stint in web production at WWD (Women's Wear Daily) and then as a freelance general news reporter at DailyMail.com, where I cover hard news, crime news, celebrity news, pop culture news, viral news and everything in between news.
I'm in the midst of completing an MFA in Emerson College's Popular Fiction Writing and Publishing program. (Highly recommend it if writing commercial or genre fiction is your bag.) I'm also a staffer on the department's newly-minted, genre-centric literary journal, Page Turner Magazine.
Other career/educational highlights include: Graduating with a BA in History from Wellesley College (where I was on the crew team, coached dorm crew - go Beebe! - and worked on its humor magazine); winning a New York City Scholastic Gold Key Award (for a poem of all things); doing my full junior year abroad at University College London; attending the Columbia Publishing Course at Oxford (England), reviewing books for Hampton Sheet magazine; handling office administration at Nancy Yost Literary Agency and appearing on film alongside "TODAY's" Al Roker and Matt Lauer in 2014's social media and cable TV ratings bonanza, Sharknado 2: The Second One.