Language is central to my worldview.

My first conscious language experience was as a child discovering the proto-Indo-European language glossary at the back of a very large and heavy American Heritage dictionary. The neurons in my brain were firing on all cylinders while poring over those pages. A few years later, I began my yearly tradition of reading The Lord of the Rings, eating up everything about Tolkien’s conlangs! In high school I spoke French with such ease my French teacher and Haitian classmates thought I spoke French at home ( I didn’t; my widowed, Irish mother only knew English and Irish). I also began writing (poems, essays, short stories) in high school.

In College I picked up Spanish in my junior year. And thanks to all my Latin American friends at Hunter College, I became borderline fluent. My Spanish writing and literature professor was so impressed by my mastery of the grammar and vocabulary that he dubbed me “Don Tomás”. He read two of my short stories at the the beginning and end of the semester in Spanish creative writing. I had also taken a pedagogical class that required me to observe and write about a high school class on a weekly basis. The professor grading my reports said she always enjoyed reading my reports; they brought the scene alive. I also researched and wrote articles for the Baruch evening newspaper, The Reporter and taught French for a semester as a teacher’s assistant.

I graduated with a double concentration in French & Spanish language and literature and a double minor in journalism (my original major) and education.

In my sophomore year in college I spent a year in France and in my last year in college I spent a summer in Spain. In between, I spent a summer in Jonquière, Québec. Subsequently, I got a master’s degree in translation from Spanish and French to English at the CUNY Graduate Center.

I’ve worked professionally as a translator for a while before I took a 20 year detour into software development, just another set of languages. More recently, since January 2023, I have been tutoring French, Spanish and English.

I am detailed-oriented. Grammar, syntax, punctuation, spelling and word choice have always been ideas and phenomena that I would ponder and discuss. It only seems a natural fit for me to engage in proofreading and copyediting. Consequently, I earned a certificate in proofreading and copyediting from the Edit Republic before launching Sherlock Editorial.