Administration
Abigail Reardon
Executive Director, Senior Instructional Professor
Abigail (“Abbie”) Reardon arrived as Executive Director of the University Writing Program and Associate Senior Instructional Professor in the College in the summer of 2024. A specialist in pedagogies of writing, writing program administration, pragmatism, and American literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Abbie has taught writing and research at every level of the curriculum, in addition to a wide range of interdisciplinary first-year seminars, pedagogical practica, and courses in American literature and culture. Before coming to the University of Chicago, Abbie was Director of Expository Writing at Rutgers University–New Brunswick, where she won the Provost-Chancellor’s Award for Innovations in Teaching and Education and the School of Arts and Sciences’ Award for Distinguished Contributions to Undergraduate Education. She received her B.A. in English and Legal Studies from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in English from Rutgers University–New Brunswick.
Ashley Lyons
Associate Director
Ashley has over 12 years of experience teaching writing to undergraduate and graduate students, developing resources to support writers arcoss the university, and leading writing pedagogy workshops and courses. Ashley also enjoys collaborating with university partners to support their goals for student writing. Ashley received an MA from the University of Chicago in 2009 and her research focused on the intellectual history of Vaishnavism and Sanskrit literature.
Crystal Holmes
Assistant Director
Crystal began teaching writing at the University of Chicago in 2014 and became an Assistant Director in 2020. She helps develop writing curricula and workshops for undergraduate, professional, and non-traditional students. She especially enjoys providing one-on-one support for academic and creative writers at the university and in the greater Chicago community.
T Lacy
Assistant Director
T Lacy joined the Writing Program staff first in 2016 as a Writing intern and MAPH Mentor after graduating from the Master’s of Arts in the Humanities the same year. After leaving to teach after school programming and executive functioning at a Chicago youth center, T then joined the Writing Program again in 2019 as a Writing Specialist, and now serves as an Assistant Director.
Ryan Oliveira
Program Coordinator
Ryan has worked for the Writing Program since 2020. He is a playwright, dramaturg, songwriter, and solo performer. He received his MFA from the University of Iowa in 2015, where he completed his thesis on saudade and lamentation in theatre. He has had his theatrical work showcased in Chicago, New York, Austin, and London. In addition to writing, he has also taught playwriting, criticism, and performance history at the University of Iowa and DePaul University.
Instructional Faculty
Kathryn Cochran
Senior Instructional Professor
Kathy has taught Academic and Professional Writing for a number of years, as well as instructing first-year students in writing in the Humanities Core. She also teaches Writing Argument for upper-level undergraudate and graduate students.
Writing Specialist Staff
Ted Alexander
ealexander3@uchicago.edu
Ted Alexander has been working for the Writing Program since 2021. His academic background is in American poetry from modernism to the present. He received his PhD in English literature and critical theory from UC Berkeley and has taught at the City University of New York and NYU. His writing has appeared in Contemporary Literature, The Wallace Stevens Journal and Paideuma.
Will Ardery
wardery@uchicago.edu
Will Ardery received a BA degree in History from Hamilton College in 2017, where he also worked as a peer writing tutor. He completed the University of Chicago’s Masters in the Social Sciences Program (MAPSS) in 2020, and joined the Writing Program the following year. He currently serves as a Writing Specialist for the Humanities Core, where he helps first year students become more confident and proficient writers. Beyond writing pedagogy, Will specializes in Antebellum American political, intellectual, and literary history.
Elizabeth Fiedler
efiedler@uchicago.edu
Elizabeth started teaching for the Writing Program while completing her PhD in Italian at the University of Chicago. Since then she has worked as a Writing Specialist in the Humanities Core and as a Lector in Little Red Schoolhouse.
Michelle Hoban
mehoban@uchicago.edu
Michelle Hoban first joined the Writing Program as a Writing Intern in 2019, after completing an MA at the University of Chicago with a focus on English literature. After leaving for a year to work in marketing for a nonprofit, Michelle returned to the Writing Program as a Writing Specialist in 2021. They now teach academic writing to both undergraduate and graduate students. They also have experience tutoring beginner French and Swedish and have been trained in teaching English as an additional language.
Sophie Myers
sophiemcmyers@uchicago.edu
Sophie McMillan-Myers has been teaching in and out of the Humanities Core since 2018 as a graduate student, Teaching Fellow, Instructional Assistant, and now Writing Specialist. She received her PhD in Music Composition from the University of Chicago in 2021, and is a composer, violist, and conductor. Her music is concerned with agency and labor, processes of becoming and unbecoming, and fragile utopias. Her other interests include gender, film and video games (especially but not only their music and sound), and, above all, teaching.
Nick Nurre
nanurre@uchicago.edu
Nick started working with the Writing Program as a Writing Intern in 2020 following his graduation from the University of Chicago’s MAPH program in the same year. Nick’s academic work concentrated in contemporary fiction and philosophy, which informs his current work as a Writing Specialist in the Reading Cultures and Philosophical Perspectives Cores. He has also taught academic writing and literary analysis to language learners abroad as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Macau, an experience which still informs his enthusiasm for engaging pedagogy that addresses diverse student needs.
Sarah Osment
sosment@uchicago.edu
Sarah joined the Writing Program as a Writing Specialist in 2021, after many years teaching academic writing, American literature, poetry and poetics, critical theory, film and environmental humanities in New England and Florida. She received her PhD from English at Brown University in 2016, and has been most driven since then by the collaborative and public-facing possibilities of academic writing. She is co-founder and editor of Hyped on Melancholy, an online magazine devoted to academic writing about music, and recently co-edited a Post45 Contemporaries cluster on the legacy of the late poet and musician David Berman.
Mike Ossman
mwo@uchicago.edu
Mike Ossman joined the Writing Program as a Writing Specialist in 2023. He earned a Master’s in the Humanities at the University of Chicago in 2013, and he then spent nine years teaching introductory philosophy courses at community colleges in Chicagoland and Orlando, Florida. His scholarship focuses on ancient Greek philosophy and the history of philosophy, but he is most passionate about teaching and pedagogy. He has also done marketing and grant writing in the nonprofit sector.
Claire Palo
cpalo@uchicago.edu
Claire began working for the Writing Program in 2019, after receiving her MA from the Master of Arts Program in the Humanities at UChicago. Claire’s research interests focus on women writers and natural philosophy in Early Modern English Literature. Since joining the Writing Program, Claire has worked as a Writing Intern, writing tutor, Peer Writing Tutor Mentor, and Lector. After leaving to complete a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Program in Romania, Claire returned to the Writing Program in 2022 as a Writing Specialist.
Cameron Powell
cgpowell@uchicago.edu
Cameron holds a BA in Mathematics and Political Studies from Bard College at Simon’s Rock, plus an MA in the Social Sciences from the University of Chicago. He joined the program in 2020 as a Writing Intern and Lector, and returned as a Writing Specialist in 2022. He has interests in University Studies and the politics of education and pedagogy, which inform his teaching. He has also worked as a Graduate Writing Consultant for UChicagoGRAD.
Thomas C. Sawyer
tsawyer@uchicago.edu
Tom received his Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature from Washington University in St. Louis in 2021. He joined the Writing Program in the same year. His scholarship operates at the intersections of book history and knowledge-formation in the literatures of medieval Europe. He has published in ELH, Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Philological Quarterly, and The Journal of Medieval Latin. He is hard at work on his first book, Recomposing Bodley 851.
Jeremy Schmidt
jschmidt1@uchicago.edu
Jeremy Schmidt is a Writing Specialist and part-time Lecturer in the Humanities Core. Born and raised in Hyde Park, he completed his PhD in the UCLA Department of English in 2020 before returning to Chicago. Jeremy has over fifteen years of experience teaching university courses in composition, literature, and creative writing, and he is particularly dedicated to helping undergraduates write about the questions—and for the disciplines and audiences—that matter to them. His own poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in publications such as The Believer, Boston Review, Lana Turner, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Anne Marie Smith
amsmith2@uchicago.edu
Anne Marie Smith began teaching writing at the University of Chicago in fall of 2022. In addition, she has over ten years of experience as a writing specialist and writing instructor. She has taught Research Writing in the Sciences and Nature Writing to science majors, Scholarly Communication to nursing majors, and Argumentative Writing and Ecology to non-science majors. She also has extensive experience in effectively helping students write personal statements for graduate and professional schools.
Karen Xu
kxu2@uchicago.edu
Karen received her MA from the University of Chicago in 2019 and began teaching with the Writing Program in the same year. She has taught writing in the Humanities and Social Sciences Core sequences, and also has experience with translation, creative nonfiction, and grant writing.
Emeritus Staff
Larry McEnerney, Director Emeritus of the Writing Program