Q. What did you compare?
A. Actually, comparative literature isn't about comparing anything per se, but rather about approaching the written word from a more theoretical or interdisciplinary perspective.

Q. So what did you really study?
A. I focused on French, Romanian and Italian in the the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I also worked with the visual arts and urban studies. My dissertation focused on my longstanding obsession -- the balcony.

Q. The Balcony? Is that a book?
A. Yep, it's a play by a French writer, Jean Genet. But I'm talking about the real thing. It's a privileged and protected perch on city residences and country estates. A preferred outpost for rulers and tyrants, from the pope to Eva Peron. Why do couples court each other on balconies, why do kings issue edicts from them, and what does any of this have to do with storytelling? What can I say, it intrigues me.

Q. What kind of classes did you take?
A. Here are a few sample course titles from my course taking days: "The Experimental Mode in Twentieth Century French Fiction," "Memory and Modernity" and "Italian Modernism."

Q. What do you want to do with that?
A. My grad studies provided an intellectual foundation, rather than a straight and narrow career path into the academy. Instead, I decided to combine these studies in literature and culture with work in journalism.

Q. Do you also teach?
A. A few years ago I taught part of class called "Imagining the City: Literature, film and the arts." It was interdisciplinary, multilingual and urban: three things I love. I worked as a writing coach for a freshman seminar about children's literature. Most recently, I taught French language and literature.

Q. But no plans to go into academia?
A. I love taking what I learned in graduate school -- asking questions, analyzing things on the micro and macro level, refusing to stop investigating when answers feel comfortable, coping with occupational hazards like espresso jitters -- and using that to approach gritty, real world problems. I guess the ivory tower just isn't for me. Maybe if it had a balcony, it'd be a different story.

Q. What's your favorite language?
A. Well... For poetry, French. For epic verse, Latin. For shouting in glee, Spanish. For shouting at oncoming traffic, Italian. For tongue twisters, Romanian. For speaking my mind, English. For sweet nothings, I plead the fifth.