Hello! I am a senior at Hope studying Secondary English Education. On campus I am also involved with dining services as a worker for Cup and Chaucer as well as Res Life as an RA! When I’m not in classes or at work you can usually find me trying to work through my apartments ever-growing list of movies we want to watch or getting coffee at one of the great coffee shops in Holland (I can’t choose a favorite). I grew up in Martin, Michigan, around an hour away from Holland, but I am hoping to move to North Carolina after graduation!
Role on the Big Read team:
This will be my second year working on the Big Read team, but this will be my first year doing in-person events since I was abroad last fall. I primarily work on the blogs for Big Read (so a lot of what you read on here comes from me), but I will also be helping at a lot of the in-person events you may come to!
What is your favorite thing about the Big Read and what are you most excited about for this year’s program?
As an English Education major, my favorite part of the Big Read program is the conversations that can be had around these books. I love a good book talk, and I have loved the participation of local schools and getting to see what the students get out of reading these books with us! I am super excited to see the creative ways that teachers can use our Big Read book this year in a new way!
What is your favorite genre of books and why:
It is hard for me to narrow down, but I have been reading a lot of historical fiction lately so I will go with that. I love history and even minored in it for a while, and getting to see a new perspective and learn new facts about these stories is awesome to me. I am currently working my way through The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen, which is about a Vietnamese double agent after the Vietnam War, and I really appreciate how this story lays out different perspectives and motivations for people on both sides at the time.