Gabrielle Flam (2010)

I am currently in the second year of my Master of Fine Arts Program in creative writing at Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts, concentrating in the genre of poetry. It was in Paris and at AUP that my incredible professors lit the literary spark within me, turning my poetic consciousness into a burning flame, and as my mentor and former teacher Jeffrey Greene likes to say, “ruined my life.” Unable to ever stop writing, I dove into my master’s studies last year, enrolling in workshops with wonderful poets, and exploring my new city of Boston. The fall foliage in full splendor, the reds and yellows welcomed me with open arms. Unfortunately, I soon discovered that Boston is not Paris—but then again, nowhere, I think, will ever be able to compare.

Last year I worked on an afterschool community outreach teaching program called EmersonWrites, teaching inner-city high school students creative writing. This year I have earned a position on staff as a teaching and research assistant to a professor in the Writing, Literature, and Publishing department. This has been a wonderful look into the world of academia, assisting with research and undergraduate classes on modernist and contemporary American poetry.

In Boston I have also been able to get a look at the publishing world. This past summer I worked at the literary and political magazine The Boston Review, as well as currently reading submissions for a literary arts journal, Redivider.

I am looking forward to finishing this year of coursework and writing my master’s thesis next fall, a collection of poetry.

Congratulations to new graduates from the department

We’d like to wish all of the new graduates well – we’ll try to get some pictures of graduation up, and hope to see their profiles on this site very soon.

Very warm wishes to:

Anna Beer (CL major)

Sophia Bogner (CL major)

Kaitlyn Cawley (CL major)

Alexia Chalendon (CL major)

Bethsabee Ory (LCA major)

Dalea Reichgott (LCA major)

Hannah Waldhorn (CL major)

Cassidy Flanagan (2007)

Graduating in Comp Lit in May 2007, I had the incredible opportunity of interning with BusinessWeek magazine (now Bloomberg BusinessWeek) in their Paris bureau.

An intern in this case meant a very poorly paid reporter (I did have that magical booklet of Tickets Restaurant: if given the chance, I would write an entirely separate blog post on how great those are!) but the bureau chief let me pitch my own stories and run with my own ideas.  While I wrote a lot about the French luxury market and learned the entire process of running a magazine, I was thrust into the throes of financial reporting when the initial economic crisis begin to set in, late summer of 2007.

Alex Shteriev (friend of the department, AUP 2002)

At AUP I completed a double-major in International Economics and International Business Administration. After working for three years in a variety of sales and marketing jobs, I enrolled in the accelerated (one-year) MBA program at Emory University, graduating in 2006. From my AUP days I will always remember the words of my favorite English teacher, Roy Rosenstein, who told me, ” Sasha, I remember when you came to us at AUP, you had so much to say but you could say so little….” I would like to believe that the Comparative Literature Program at AUP helped me become much more eloquent and assertive in both my oral and written English skills, while providing me with much joy reading and analyzing the work of some great authors.

After completing my MBA at Emory University and working in Washington, DC, for the real estate consulting company Robert Charles Lesser, I took a position as an investment manager for a joint venture between a Bulgarian investment fund and the Sovereign Wealth Fund of Oman, working on developing real estate projects in Eastern Europe. In 2009 I moved to Toronto to join Sunbelt Business Brokers, an intermediary specializing in facilitating the purchasing and selling of small to mid-size private enterprises. In the summer of 2010 with a business partner I started our own company, Beacon Brokerage (www.beaconbrokerage.ca), building on our experience and focusing on main street market transactions.

Maya Stoilova (2006)

Two months after I quit my IBM remote technical assistance job and two years after I finished the one-year screenwriting program at FAMU, Prague, AUP helped me regain some sense of perspective and remember who I was (since I gave up on ever knowing who I am and will be). After reading the CompLit blog, I intensely revived AUP as one of the few continuous (and still continuing) experiences in my otherwise episodic life. Sometimes, I have the feeling of living several lives, not consecutively, but simultaneously. It almost makes the rebirth question irrelevant.

Amy Wood (2007)

Originally from Clearwater Florida, I grew up performing in musical comedies with a traveling theatre troupe. Working at a car wash outside of high school hours permitted me to save up enough money to get the hell out of Florida and I first came to Paris at the age of 18 as a model.

Catalina José Rodríguez (2001)

I am originally from Mexico City. In 1995 I moved to France, where I lived, worked, and studied for seven years. I earned my BA in Comparative Literature at AUP with a minor in Theatre Performance.

Sarah Watts (2000)

I left AUP in December of 1999.  I was able to finish a few general education courses in California and return to Paris in May of 2000 to graduate with a BA in comparative literature.  At that point I had no intention of returning to any sort of studies, despite the efforts of my professors to convince me that having a career as a professor would also give me the time to do what I had always wanted: write fiction.  After less than a year as a secretary in a sales office, I decided to go back to school to at least avoid for a time the working world.

María Tubio (2003)

My name is María Tubio and I am from Buenos Aires, Argentina. I went to AUP, where I majored in Comparative Literature and also did a minor in French. What can I say about the time I spent at AUP? Well, when I think about it sometimes I wonder if it all really happened, if all the great experiences I had in Paris were real…. Seriously, sometimes I ask myself, “Did I really go to Italy with my class just to practice Italian? Did I really go to the Louvre and to the theater with my AUP professors? Did I really read about Javert’s death in Les Misérables while I was sitting next to the Seine?” I have too many memories! Perhaps that’s why I can’t believe all those things actually happened in such a short period of time.

Peggy Porter (Tierney) (1992)

Peggy Porter (1992)

After graduating from AUP in 1992, I moved to London and married a man I met in Paris (to whom I am still married) and got my break in publishing through a job as an Americanization editor for Usborne Books, a British children’s book publisher. I will always remember my first day, sitting in my tiny cubicle, in total wonder that I was getting paid to read.