Katie Booth

After years of cobbling together a living in such growth industries as coffee shop management, gardening, babysitting, and event-planning at a small liberal arts college, I came to Pittsburgh for the opportunity to focus more on my writing and less on complicated personal budget spreadsheets. I began writing about Deaf culture as undergrad at Hampshire College, and my manuscript at Pitt continues in this vein, focusing on the movement to abolish the use of Sign Language in deaf schools. I have been awarded a fellowship at the Edward Albee Foundation, and have been a finalist for a Kimmel Harding Nelson Fellowship, a Sandol Milliken Stoddard Scholarship and a Breadloaf Conference Scholarship.  I teach writing at the University of Pittsburgh, and look forward to teaching at Sun Yat-sen University for the 2011-12 academic year, before returning to Pitt to complete my degree.