I hold a PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Princeton University, and a BA from Vanderbilt University, where I majored in German and History, with a minor in Russian. After college I spent a year in Russia on a Fulbright scholarship. Later on, I worked for two years in Russia as translator at KPMG, first in their Moscow office (in a skyscraper overlooking the city!), and then in the St. Petersburg office.

Today I am a lecturer in Slavic Languages and Literatures at Princeton, where I've taught a number of different courses: first- and second-year Russian, Polish, and Czech; an introduction to (Old) Church Slavonic and the development of Slavic; a seminar on late Soviet rock music; and East European Literature and Politics. I also work as a freelance translator, mostly from Russian, French, and German.

Having finished four volumes of my Russian language series, I'm currently working on a few other Russian books: some dual-language Russian readers (starting with Chekhov), a book on Russian verbs, and a beginner's guide to cursing in Russian. In the meantime, I'm also working on a Czech textbook. When not prevented by epidemics, I spend as much time as I can in Russia; at last count I've spent around 6 years there altogether.