Who We Are: The Prose Pros
Located in Humanities 231, the Scripps Writing Center helps writers grow. We give students the chance to work on their writing by engaging in collaborative discussions, offering a comfortable space with tea, snacks, and a snazzy couch.
The Profs
Alongside our amazing peer tutors, the Scripps Writing Center hosts professional staff who work with students on their writing projects.
Adam Novy
Adam Novy lives in an apartment nobody can find. It’s at the far end of a driveway, around a corner, and behind another house. Delivery people have to look on Google Satellite to see it. His cat’s Instagram (Herschel_lacat) has more followers than you, and he’s working on it now, and listening to French pop from the Seventies. For more information on Adam, click here.
Glenn Simshaw
Glenn went into literature and writing partly because as a young child his mom read him nonsense poetry about elephants and telephones. He can roll his tongue but understands this ability doesn’t result from a single dominant gene. He likes big dogs and small dogs who think they’re big dogs. He enjoys chocolate chip cookies but believes Oreos are overrated. His favorite great aunt was among the world’s foremost authorities on antique doorknobs. His favorite novel is Don Quixote. For more information on Glenn, click here.
Pam Bromley
Pam lives in a yellow bungalow with her husband and her dachshund rescue pup. She grew up in Colorado hiking in the mountains, almost always with border collies. She is currently enthralled by the small-scale novels of the should-be-much-better-known Barbara Pym, especially Excellent Women and Quartet in Autumn. She thinks semicolons are vastly underrated. For more information on Pam, click here.
Current Tutors
Grace Hill
What Grace lacks in size (she stands at a staggering 5’2”), she makes up for in passion for the presence in life that inspires poetry, ballroom boogie, and warm-fuzzy-kitty-tummies. She is a spicy bilingual meatball that loves to foxtrot to rap music and frequently expresses her enthusiasm and utter perplexity for life using the interrobang. Her essence is most accurately emulated by naughty ponies; she is a rebellious and charming creature with a kick-in-the-pants sense of humor. As with a pony, don’t pull her hair or tease her with snack—she doesn’t like that.
Maya Lozinsky
Maya, who’s from right outside Boston, is ecstatic to be back on campus and is in the process of teaching herself how to do a handstand in her free time. She is a big fan of the oxford comma and prefers tea over coffee. She enjoys bullet journaling and is an enthusiastic advocate of “second dinner” (a post-dinner snack best served around 9:00 p.m.). She would like to visit Machu Picchu in the next two years and hopes to spot a mythical creature at some point. For now, though, she will continue to perfect her British accent and will continue pursuing her dream of seeing a moose in real life.
Mirabella Miller
Mirabella’s favorite animal is a tie between a deer and a coyote. Her favorite color is blue, but her favorite color to wear is red. Her favorite book is The Idiot by Elif Batuman. On campus, you can find her in Tiernan Field House attempting complicated yoga poses, in her room blasting Bruce Springsteen, or in the second-floor windows area of Honnold Library (the only place she can focus). She hopes people would describe her as funny, sharp and helpful, but you’ll have to assess that for yourself when you come into the Writing Center.
Melia Oliver
Melia is a Scorpio Goodreads enthusiast from Berkeley, CA. If that first sentence was enough to make you a bit weary of her, she understands. It’s not as bad as it looks! Melia believes that the em-dash is the most undervalued and underutilized form of punctuation and she simply can’t stand the injustice. Melia has strawberry blonde hair that regularly sparks debate over whether she is blonde or a redhead. If you see a tutor in the writing center with a hair color that looks particularly debatable, that is likely Melia. She is always hearing arguments.
Aidan Trulove
Aidan changes aesthetics nearly every day as determined by a schedule that exists solely within the darkest recesses of her mind. Some of her most iconic outfits (which she willingly wore in public) include a pirate costume (Halloween), head-to-toe denim wrapped in plastic flowers, a vampire costume (not Halloween), and a renaissance-inspired look complete with a butterfly corset she bought for $5. Aidan likes to think that her writing style is just as bold as her fashion sense, and her paragraphs are just as embellished with commas as her shirts are with loose glitter. If you see her in the Writing Center, do not be alarmed; she may be dressed like a vampire/witch/pirate/prince/ghost, but she’s actually very approachable.
Jacqueline Tsai
Jacqueline, although born and raised in Minnesota, cannot stand the cold, and will always pull out her puffer jacket in sub-70-degree weather. Pleasing to her mom, she will always fall victim to a good sale (never buy anything at full price). Writing sarcastic comments in the margins of books is her specialty along with the ability to fall asleep anywhere, including a gym locker-room. Expect to be shown a picture or two of her rat-dogs, Koko and Lulu, during your Writing Center appointment.
Belèn Yudess
Belen’s deepest and most prominent desire is for all to realize the magic of Blobfish of course but also Screaming Goat, falsely known as the epitome of terror and nightmares by a majority of her friends. She adopted Screaming Goat from the discount aisle of Kohls on a fateful November evening and immediately became enamored by his bulging eyes and moving rendition of Deck the Halls, which he sings in the tune of AHHHHHHHHHH at ranging intervals. She still believes that everyone must be a part of one fandom as she recently decided to spend all her remaining attention on Good Omens conspiracy theories, Kaz Brekker fan accounts and continued Shadowhunter discourse. If you would like to fangirl with her or be bombarded with glamour shots of Screaming Goat, stop by and visit her at the writing center!
Naima van Tyn
Naima is a born and raised Coloradan. She staunchly believes the correct pronunciation is Colo-RAD-o (not ROD), and predictably enjoys skiing, hiking, camping, playing music, and dancing (the last one is not Colorado specific). And yes, Naïma does have an umlaut over the “i” in her name but is too unconfrontational to correct people when they write it wrong, which usually spirals her into a slight identity crisis. However, she will become confrontational and (let’s be real) very competitive when it comes to speed card games or Harry Potter trivia, so enter these activities at your own risk. She appreciates Oxford commas and parenthesis in sentences, but won’t judge you if you don’t use them (probably).
Sadie Matz
Sadie grew up in New York City, so the fruit trees of Scripps campus are a total marvel to her. Despite living on campus for two years, she continues to compulsively pick olives and figs for their sheer novelty. Sadie visits nytimes.com/crosswords religiously; her favorite game is Connections and her least favorite is Vertex. Her primary long-term goals in life are to complete the Sunday puzzle with ease, like her father, and champion the Spelling Bee, like her mother. When she isn’t playing word games online, you can find Sadie practicing her cappuccinos at the Motley or playing with hot glue guns at the Makerspace.
Kira Sekhar
Kira is from Chicago, Illinois (which she considers to be best city in the world, and she will repeatedly try to convince you of this). She is one of the Writing Center’s few resident STEM majors so make sure to bring her your most confusing Philosophy papers to keep her on her toes. In her free time, Kira takes lots of 0.5x photos, sings in an acapella group, sends Tiktoks of King Julian AI song covers to her friends, and walks on the treadmill at Tiernan while listening to Taylor Swift at full volume and dissociating. If you live in Browning you may occasionally see her sporting a headband or socks and sandals. Try to ignore it.
Katherine Robinson
Katherine believes cryptozoology is the cutting edge of natural science. She is most looking forward to indisputable evidence of the Loveland frogman, and hopes he wears a tweed jacket or similarly whimsical clothing. Though not a cryptid hunter herself, Katherine played with too many Monster High dolls as a child and is now the world’s foremost cryptid sartorial expert. Her favorite discoveries include a small, wet dinner jacket belonging to the fur-bearing trout and a surprisingly cozy cardigan left by the Mothman. Visit Katherine at the Writing Center for updates on her latest finds or to discuss her other questionable passions- CGI Barbie movies, true crime, UFO theories, or long LBJ biographies.
Brooke Kasl-Godley
Like every other person at the 5Cs, Brooke hails from the Bay Area. However, in her search for uniqueness, she insists that there’s no one else from her neck of woods–if you’re from Oakland-ish, she would like to be your friend. Some of her passions include proudly rejecting the STEM-Humanities dichotomy, mispronouncing the word nucleus, and developing a theory about the high frequency of twins in Claremont (any shared wisdom would be appreciated). Her biggest inspirations in life are Ms. Frizzle, the band boygenius, and elderly women who donate floral dresses to thrift stores. If you hear someone enthusiastically dealing animal facts or commenting on the climbability of a tree, it might be her.
Nikki Godinez
Nikki has a bad habit of watching TikTok edits of a TV show, reading three Vulture articles about it, and then pretending she has seen the show. She actually has seen NBC’s Hannibal and would love to talk about it anytime (make an appointment with her!). She’s a former Marvel nerd who hates Avengers: Endgame (fight me). Nikki is pro-twin (she has one), pro-tweens having emo phases (she had one), pro-ampersand (it’s beautiful & what a word), and clearly pro-parentheses. According to Annie (a liar), Nikki’s a tasteful liar with a zest for life (believe it or not). She used to be for putting a space before and after an em dash but has since switched sides––yay for no spaces!
Annie Bragdon
Shouts and Murmurs called Annie Bragdon “God’s biggest and best joke yet.” She was third runner-up in the American Baby of the Year contest in 2019 but unfortunately lost to the stunning Steed Bonaparte (he is not the emblem of European fortune that his name makes him out to be; it’s pronounced bonk-uh-duh-par-tah-dah). She is still not over this loss, and her therapist predicts she never will be. She has OJ Simpson’s license plate memorized a little bit more than the average person. But she isn’t the average person; she is a rapscallion through and through. Annie spends her free time organizing the biggest annual event the world has ever seen: Crinkle Fest.
Tess Frazer
Tess is a Texan and she owns that identity loud and proud. She loves clompin’ around in her boots, scootin’ around the dance floor, and ridin’ horses. She simply cannot stand when people wear cowboy boots outside of jeans (its acceptable with skirts, shorts, and dresses), but if you are wearin’ jeans make them boot cut, please. She used to hate country music, but after spending a summer two steppin’, she now flirts with the idea of being a country music fan. She loves readin’ poetry, but struggles to write it. She is excited about workin’ with y’all in the writing center! (Don’t worry, she doesn’t really have a Texan accent).
Becoming a Tutor
We hire a select number of new peer tutors each spring for the following academic year. If you like writing, want a job where you can work together with other Scripps students, and like the idea of having chocolate available throughout your shift, consider applying to join us. Prospective tutors are invited to learn more about the Writing Center by exploring this website and visiting the Writing Center itself during regular hours—observing what we do and talking to current tutors. Peer tutors should be strong writers and responsible employees. The ideal tutor leads students to their own answers through active listening and careful questioning. While tutors do not edit papers, they must be able to explain grammar, punctuation, and usage conventions. If you are interested in becoming a Writing Center peer tutor, please contact Writing Center Director Glenn Simshaw.