She completed an undergraduate degree in English and journalism at the University of Michigan, a master’s degree in creative writing at Boston University, and a Ph.D. at the University of Connecticut, where she studied rhetoric and autobiography. Her critical essays on autobiography have appeared in books such as Genre by Exampleand Sharing Pedagogies. She is also a creative writer; her short stories, “Crooked” and “Nice, but Not Famous,” were nominated for the Henfield/Transatlantic Prize, and her memoir essay, “Witness,” received an Aetna Creative Nonfiction Award. She is currently at work on a book-length memoir.