From the beginning, letters were more than they seemed. The one that began the story was often enormous and ornamental, a world unto itself. I loved the Hebrew snaillike “fey” and dressed like it for a performance. Entranced by the shapes and sounds inside the books, I’d say “cats caterwauling” over and over again to hear them.

I was raised on ritual and recitation. History and archaeology books were everywhere. The house was old and so was the furniture. A lot of dark, fabled wood. A photograph my mother took of Qumran Cave 4 with its tiny dark doorway hung on the wall; an image from Lascaux Cave was set above the fireplace. A bellows barely used would take on a life of its own and become a symbol.

My work is about the hiddenness and the materiality of text. It’s about folkways and furniture, inheritance and artifacts.

I’m the author of Like an Olive (Verge Books, 2022) and Aleph (Verge Books, 2017). My poetry and essays have appeared in Etcetera, Luigi Ten Co, West Branch, Dispatches from the Poetry Wars, Flag + Void, CutBank, and LVNG, among other publications. Here is an interview on Like an Olive.

I’ve been a member of the Transcending Trauma Project research team since 2016, transcribing, analyzing, and coding semistructured long interviews with Holocaust survivors, their children, and grandchildren. I’ve prepared these texts for the archives at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.

I received my BA in English from the University of Exeter in England and was awarded the Gamini Salgado Prize “for the undergraduate dissertation that best communicates the qualities of imagination and intellectual flair.” I hold an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Colorado State University and a Specialized Certificate in Copyediting from the University of California, San Diego. I’m a member of ACES: The Society for Editing. I edit and proofread fiction, nonfiction, and poetry manuscripts for both publishers and independent authors.

I grew up in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania, just outside Philadelphia in a village of sorts and now by the Salish Sea with my husband Rico and our dear cat Fennel in a peaceful, caring community; I’ve never lived anywhere where I’ve felt so close to my neighbors.

My name is transliterated from the Hebrew and is pronounced “teer-tzah.” The letter “tzadi” that makes the “tz” sound looks like a kneeling deer. Mispronunciation of my name is common. The relationship between English and Hebrew, the wider culture I inhabit and the smaller in which I was raised, still resonating, is a curious, complicated, and rich one.