A native of Brunswick, Maine, she grew up in the pentecostal Church of God and received her BA in history and English at Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee. While in college she started attending a small local Episcopal church and fell in love with the liturgy in general and the Eucharist in particular. Shortly after, she completed a master’s degree in medieval history at the University of Durham in the UK, and still misses going into the cathedral every day to complain about the state of the historical profession to the Venerable Bede. She is a recent graduate of the Medieval Institute at the University of Notre Dame, completing her doctoral dissertation on the early medieval exegesis of the Song of Songs. She is an avid amateur singers, particularly of early music, and can be relied upon to promote the causes of good Latin, good literature, good food, and good company.