She has been teaching at the University of Washington since 1990. Other teaching experiences include Queens (Canada), Emory, Northwestern and Duke universities. Her teaching interests are Old French language and literature, contemporary Québécois literature and French fairy tales. For someone who is trained to do literary analysis, writing a novel is like "crossing to the other side." Creative fiction has often been compared to walking through a dark and unfamiliar road using a flashlight. With only a bit of the road illuminated ahead one has to walk slowly, hesitantly and sometimes fearfully. For a scholar, writing fiction can be a very humbling experience.