I studied at Cambridge and Princeton, receiving a PhD in English Literature in May 2020. For a period of five years, I taught in New Jersey prisons, college classes in literature, creative writing, and political theory. I’m now Assistant Professor of English at Northeastern University London.

My PhD research was in Renaissance literature, focusing on the English Civil War period (1640-1660), and the relationship between poetry, identity, and political conflict. Recently, I’ve become interested in the uses of literature in the movement to abolish slavery as well as the contemporary movement to abolish prisons. (More details here.)

I also write about contemporary literature and visual art, and have published more experimental essays on topics including dusk, artificial wildflower meadows, and a second-hand computer market (some links here). My work has appeared in The Guardian, Frieze, and The White Review, where I also served as a contributing editor.

My first book is about John Milton’s Paradise Lost. It tells the story of twelve readers of Milton’s epic - including Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Woolf, and Malcolm X. What in Me is Dark: The Revolutionary Afterlife of Paradise Lost, will be published in November (you can preorder the US edition here and the UK edition here).

Photo credit: Nikolai Cedraeus.