Staff
Maggie
Debelius, Writing Center Director
Maggie received her PhD in English from Princeton University. She
is the co-author of the book So What Are You Going to Do With
That?, a career guide for humanities students. Along with running
the Writing Center, Maggie teaches Approaches to Composition and first-year
writing courses.
Jan Williams,
Writing Center Coordinator
Hometown: Baltimore, MD
Undergraduate Institution: Loyola University, Maryland
Major: English
Interests: 19th and 20th century poetry, phenomenology, football, playing guitar
"Advice to young writers who want to get ahead without any annoying delays: don't write about Man, write about a man." --E.B. White
Office Hours:
Undergraduate Tutors
Berkley Braden
Hometown: Norfolk, Virginia
Year: 2011
Major: Spanish and English
Interests: Traveling, writing, photography, learning languages, working with prospective and incoming Georgetown students!
"We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in restrospection." - Anais Nin
Office Hours:
S 2:10 - 3:10; W 1:10 - 2:10; Th 5:10 - 6:10
Nathan Bu
Hometown: Short Hills, NJ
Year: 2013
Major: SFS, Undeclared
Interests: Water Polo, Star Wars, Odwalla Juice
"You'll never be a poet until you realize that everything I say today and this quarter is wrong." - Richard Hugo
Office Hours:
T 12:10 - 3:10
Kinne Chapin
Hometown: Boston, MA
Year: 2012
Major: English and History
Interests: Reading, Writing, Good Movies, Bad Movies, Eating, Urban Outfitters, Friends, and Pop Culture
"I admire anybody who has the guts to write anything at all."
E. B. White
Office Hours:
T 12:10 - 1:10, 3:10 - 4:10; Th 3:10 - 4:10
Chris Cimaglio
Hometown: Woodbine, MD
Year: SFS 2011
Major: Culture and Politics
Interests: Music, politics, movies, writing, pop culture, Americana
“All the fun is in how you say a thing.” -Robert Frost
Office Hours:
T 5:10 - 6:10; W 12:10 - 1:10; Th 4:10 - 5:10
Chrissy Cobuzzi
Hometown: Westfield, NJ
Year: 2011
Major: English major with a double minor in Spanish and Sociology
Interests: Writing, art, dance, fashion, laughing with friends, Georgetown, Spain/Spanish language, NYC, people watching, defending New Jersey
Other languages: Advanced Spanish (I wouldn't say fluent)
"I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension." Norman Mailer
Office Hours:
S 4:10 - 5:10; M 6:10 - 7:10; W 4:10 - 5:10
Madeleine Collins
Hometown:
St. George's, Bermuda
Year: 2013
Major: Undeclared
Interests:
Travel, movies, books, food, ballet, yoga
"Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self" -Cyril Connolly
Office Hours:
T 5:10 - 6:10; M 3:10 - 4:10; W 3:10 - 4:10
Katie Cronen
Hometown: Westfield, NJ
Year:
2011
Major: Psychology Major, French & English minors
Interests: sarcasm, basketball, travel, Qdoba Mondays, French culture, working on bucket lists and encouraging cura personalis at Georgetown
"I try to leave out the parts that people skip." -Elmore Leonard
Office Hours:
S 12:10 - 1:10; W 1:10 - 2:10; Th 12:10 - 1:10
Emma Forster
Hometown: Doylestown, PA
Year: College 2013
Major: English and Art History
Interests: Art, the Food Network, WGTB, the Georgetown Voice, online shopping, skiing, cats
"A backward poet writes inverse."
Office Hours:
M 2:10 - 4:10; Th 5:10 - 6:10
Amelia Hall
Hometown: Natchitoches, Louisiana
Year: 2013
Major: English and Theology
Interests: playing the piano, visual art, Lord Byron, slang, wordplay, fairytales, and reading/editing the notes people write in the margins of library books
Office Hours:
M 5:10 - 6:10; W 5:10 - 7:10
Miranda Hall
Hometown: Baltimore, MD
Year: 2011
Major: Theater and Performance Studies, English; French Minor
Interests: plays, poems, Paris, running, yoga, Trader Joe's
"Please write again soon!" -Rosemary Hall
Office Hours:
S 6:10 - 7:10; M 12:10 - 1:10; Th 1:10 - 2:10
Mary Kate Holman
Hometown: Bryn Mawr, PA
Year: 2011
Major: English (French and Theology minors)
Interests: Theology, Shakespeare, cooking impromptu meals, windy days, and France
“I just sit at a typewriter and curse a bit.” –P.G. Wodehouse
Office Hours:
T 1:10 - 2:10; Th 1:10 - 2:10, 6:10 - 7:10
Tom Kelly
Hometown: Woodbury, New Jersey
Year: 2011
Major: English
Interests: Seashells, comix, 4/4 time, and places that look like they might be haunted.
“To write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write…” –Gertrude Stein
Office Hours:
M 12:10 - 2:10; T 4:10 - 5:10
Marcie King
Hometown: Baltimore, MD
Year: 2013
Major: Psychology
Interests: reading, yoga, running, broadway (junkie), Cognitive Aging Lab
Office Hours:
S 4:10 - 5:10; M 6:10 - 7:10; W 3:10 - 4:10
Molly Kozel
Hometown: Jamestown, Rhode Island
Year: 2011
Major: English
Interests: grungy rock and blues music, graphic novels, grocery shopping, pretending to do homework but really just sitting around talking with friends
“The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.” - Vladimir Nabakov
Office Hours:
S 1:10 - 2:10; W 4:10 - 5:10; Th 12:10 - 1:10
Nadia Mahmassani
Hometown: Frederick, MD
Year: 2012
Major: American Studies
Interests: Latin America, singing, famous and not-so-famous speeches, scrapbooks, any mural anywhere, seashells, sea glass, and the stories behind portraits
Other languages: Spanish, Arabic
“Let the snake wait under / his weed / and the writing / be of words, slow and quick, sharp / to strike, quiet to wait, / sleepless.” – William Carlos Williams
Office Hours:
T 3:10 - 5:10; W 12:10 - 1:10
Bridget Power
Hometown: Toronto, Ontario
Year: 2012
Major: American Studies
Interests: Film, Sports, Best Buddies, GERMS
"Writing is hard, even for authors who do it all the time...What should be easy and flowing looks tangled or feeble or overblown--not what was meant at all." -Roger Angell
Office Hours:
S 3:10 - 4:10; M 4:10 - 5:10; Th 5:10 - 6:10
Mary Jane Reen
Hometown: Essex Junction, VT
Year: 2011
Major: American Studies (Pre-Med)
Interests: swimming, reading, music, meeting new people, traveling, the beach
"Easy reading is damn hard writing." -Nathaniel Hawthorne
Office Hours:
S 12:10 - 2:10; Th 4:10 - 5:10
Jenny Rogers
Hometown: Rockwall, TX
Year: 2011
Major: English
Interests:
Photography, History, Tex-Mex food, and Jack the Bulldog
"I hate writing. I love to have written." - Dorothy Parker
Office Hours:
M 1:10 - 3:10; W 2:10 - 3:10
Brian Russell
Hometown: Andover, Massachusetts
Year: 2013
Major: Undeclared, Pre-med
Interests: Reading, running, the History Channel, hiking, Boston sports, and music
"Whether or not you write well, write bravely." -Bill Stout
Office Hours:
M 1:10 - 3:10; T 2:10 - 3:10
Mary Margaret Ryan
Hometown: Leawood, KS
Year: 2013
Major: Undeclared
Interests: Reading, writing, learning languages, art, Haribo Raspberries, bookstores, coffee, talking to myself, traveling, daydreaming
"For it would seem - her case proved it - that we write, not with the fingers, but with the whole person. The nerve which controls the pen winds itself about every fibre of our being, threads the heart, pierces the liver." -Virginia Woolf
Office Hours:
T 2:10 - 3:10; W 2:10 - 4:10
Emily Sauerhoff
Hometown: Katonah, NY
Year: 2011
Major: English and Psychology
Interests: Dancing, reading, sweet potato fries, movie music, rain, traveling, list-making
“I have hated the words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.” -Markus Zusak, "The Book Thief"
Office Hours:
S 2:10 - 3:10; Th 1:10 - 3:10
Toby Ulm
Hometown: Marlborough, England
Year: College 2011
Majors: Philosophy and English
Interests: Track and Field, Hermit Crab Racing, and NOT using pretentious language in class!
"The bad Artists imitate, the good Artists steal." Pablo Picasso Toby Ulm
Office Hours:
S 5:10 - 7:10; Th 6:10 - 7:10
Ceecee Yao
Hometown: Rockville, MD
Year: 2013
Major: Government and Psychology
Interests: Listening to good music, singing in the shower, autumn weather, and color coding
Other languages: Chinese
"Whether or not you write well, write bravely." -Bill Stout
Office Hours:
M 4:10 - 6:10; T 6:10 - 7:10
Julia Yrani
Hometown: San Francisco
Year: 2013
Major: SFS majoring in Science, Technology and International Affairs with a concentration in Security Studies
Interests: having too much to do, getting lost in profundities with friends, and finding beautiful things in unlikely places
Other languages: Arabic
“Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire." -Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Office Hours:
S 5:10 - 6:10; W 12:10 - 1:10; Th 6:10 - 7:10
Graduate Tutors
Benjamin Gross '12
Hometown: Norfolk, VA
Undergrad Institution: University of Virginia
Major: Spanish
Interests:
Paula Hopkins '12
Hometown: New York, NY
Undergrad Institution: Boston College
Major: English
Interests: Issues of race and class in contemporary literature and visual culture; football (college and professional), museums
"Grammar is a piano I play by ear. All I know about grammar is power" -- Joan Didion
Office Hours:
Friday 10:10 AM-1:10 PM
Maeghan Keane '12
Hometown: Mansfield, MA
Undergraduate Institution: American University
Major: Literature
Interests: queer theory and contemporary American texts, African American literature, New York school poets, film noir, magical realism, Virginia Woolf, urban culture studies, novels with frustrating endings, sweater weather, and eating sleeves of Oreos at 3AM
"When you're writing you're trying to find out something which you don't know" -James Baldwin
Office Hours:
Anne Murphy '11
Undergrad Institution: Wake Forest University
Major: English
Hometown: Atlanta, GA
Interests: Postcolonial and Contemporary World Literature
"Because this business of becoming conscious, of being a writer, is ultimately about asking yourself, How alive am I willing to be?" - Anne Lamott
Office Hours:
Allison Schaeffer ‘11
Hometown: Boca Raton, FL
Undergraduate Institution: William and Mary
Major: English and History
Interests: running, reading, pumpkin spice lattes
"Why don't you write books people can read?" - Nora Joyce to her husband, James Joyce
"Put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it." - Colegge
Office Hours:
Sarah Sutor '12
Hometown: Indianapolis, IN
Undergrad Institution: Denison University
Major: English and History
Interests: 19th Century British literature, medieval literature, children's literature, folklore
"You sort of start thinking anything's possible if you've got enough nerve." -Ginny Weasley, in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling
Michael Walsh '11
Hometown: Scotch Plains, NJ
Undergrad Institution: Manhattan College
Major: English
Interests: Modernist writers, Romanticism, Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Shakespeare, and the French New Wave
“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug” - Mark Twain
Kristen Werder '11
Hometown: Johnstown, PA
Undergrad Institution: Clarion University of Pennsylvania
Major: English, Education
Interests: sports, traveling, aquatic life, postcards, mad libs
“We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.” - Maya Angelou
Office Hours:
Cal Woodruff '11
Undergrad Institution: Birmingham-Southern College
Hometown: Abbeville, Louisiana
Majors: English & French
Interests: Approaches to learning and writing foreign languages, 19th century British & French literature & visual arts, 20th century American literature, the Francophone world, sports, politics, et al.
“I try not to write things that people wouldn’t want to read.”—William C. Carter
Office Hours:
STAFF
------------------------------
Maggie Debelius,
Writing Center Director
Dan Rothfarb,
Writing Center Coordinator
Jan Williams,
Writing Center Coordinator
UNDERGRADUATE TUTORS
------------------------------
Berkley Braden
Nathan Bu
Kinne Chapin
Chris Cimaglio
Chrissy Cobuzi
Madeleine Collins
Katie Cronen
Emma Forster
Amelia Hall
Miranda Hall
Mary Kate Holman
Tom Kelly
Marcy King
Molly Kozel
Nadia Mahmassani
Bridget Power
Mary Jane Reen
Jenny Rogers
Brian Russel
Mary Margaret Ryan
Emily Sauerhoff
Toby Ulm
Ceecee Yao
Julia Yrani
GRADUATE TUTORS
------------------------------
Ben Gross
Paula Hopkins
Maeghan Keane
Michael Walsh
Kristen Werder
Journalism:
Continuing Studies:
Allison Schaeffer
Cal Woodruff