Hello.
I’m a nonfiction writer in Los Angeles. I love to draw out stories and figures that live hidden in plain sight, retrace lesser-known histories, and observe everyday obsessions. My longform (book) writing is represented by Elias Altman, Massie & McQuilkin Literary Agents, New York. I’m always scribbling at some essay, book review, or narrative experiment.
Bio
I was born in Berlin, Germany, and studied Classics in London and at Yale. I worked a few years in London, then wrote my PhD on the ancient Greek tragedian Sophocles, back in Berlin. I taught in the Classics department of Humboldt University, a place filled with the bronze busts, portraits and figureheads of great classical linguists and historians; I also taught at the center for Gender studies.
But something pulled me to Finance—maybe it was London, where the financial services industry breathes its influence into every last corner of every little street. So I first joined a venture capital firm, where I did Press, and worked with financial journalists. Then, I moved to California, where currently I’m a corporate writer at Wells Fargo, the bank that began as a stagecoach hauling gold in the Old West.
Also in LA, I’m in a theater lab rewriting of Queen for a Day, a 1950s game show which had ordinary housewives compete over which one of them had the most tragic and difficult life. Audiences would vote a “winner” by applause-o-meter, who would then receive a shower of (sponsored) gifts. Sounds pretty gnarly, right?
Here is my archive.
2024
Narrative essay: This is California, too, in Press Pause.
2023
Book review essay: Dysmorphia, ‘degenerate’ art, and the dormancy of toxic thoughts, in The Smart Set.
2022
Book review: Delia Derbyshire, or the queen of electronic music. On Re-Sisters by Cosey Fanni Tutti.
2019
Book: Classical Literature and Posthumanism, a collection of reference essays. Bloomsbury, 480pp.
- Reviewed by Ella Haselswerdt for Bryn Mawr Classical Review.
- Reviewed by Megen de Bruin-Molé for Classical Review.
- Discussed in Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism (Springer International, 2022).
Essay: “Theoretical introduction: the subject of the human,” co-written with Giulia Maria Chesi
Essay: “Malfunctions of Embodiment: Man/Weapon Agency and the Greek Ideology of Masculinity.”
Translation: “How to Become a Cyborg.” Bloomsbury.
Review: Feminist clowns and fairy tale in Bait: Kill the Princess. In Broadway Baby.
Review: Butch Princesa by Andrea Spisto. In Broadway Baby.
2018
Book review: Objects in ancient Greek theater. In Bryn Mawr Classical Review.
2017
Film review. Discreet, Travis Matthews’ ballad to gay Texans (Berlin Film Festival)
Golden Exits fails to glisten at the 2017 Berlinale.
2016
Dissertation: Ph.D. thesis on the ancient Greek tragedian Sophocles. Exclusion in Sophocles.
2015
Interview: Biographer Clifford Slapper on the life of Mike Garson. Bowie’s Piano Man.
Book review: The Berlin Diaries by Noel Maurice. Remembrance of the 1990s.
2014
Interview: Lauren Oyler on writing Berlin.
Book review: A 1970s childhood in Thatcher’s Britain. Springfield Road by Salena Godden.
2013
2012
Book review: on staged murders and narrated deaths in Greek tragedy. Bryn Mawr Classical Review.
2011
Greek lyric arrangement: Brian Elias’ Electra Mourns–premiered at BBC Proms, 2012
2009
Translation: “Books and Literacy,” in The Oxford Handbook of Hellenic Studies.
Other work (partial list)
Performance
- In 2023 I was an artist in residence at the Catwalk Institute with my 4-woman Queen for a Day theater lab.
- Reading and storytelling at the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe festival.
- At Betonest artist residency in 2018, I developed the multimedia poem Looking for Heat in collaboration with performance artist Lady Gaby.
- In 2017, I wrote and performed a cycle of songs about St Giles, the saint of lepers (I did!).
- Used experimental “living room theater” settings to stage my first own play Freud’s Taboo (2010).
- Directed the KCL Greek play in 2006, Aristophanes’ Ecclesiazusae (Women Take Power)
Editing
- In 2023, I’m a Reader at LA-based literary magazine Exposition Review. Submit your stuff!
- In 2014-16, I was the inaugural literary editor of Indierepublik, covering a fast-growing scene of anglophone poets and writers in the German capital.
- While at Yale, I was nonfiction editor of Palimpsest, the literary and arts magazine.
Contact
My email is glossyruin at gmail dot com.