Eileen talks to linguist Mary Ann (Cockerill) Walter about her love of languages, living and teaching in 10 different countries (she’s currently at the University of the Virgin Islands!) and discovering Arabic and linguistics at Harvard. She also gives us a linguist’s take on the recent Percival Everett novel, James, and offers some additional fiction recommendations. Mary Ann also shares her personal connection to the nonprofit ENOUGH! Plays to End Gun Violence, founded in response to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary, the school she attended in her hometown of Uvalde, Texas. The organization teaches highschoolers all over the U.S. to write and stage their own plays about this urgent national issue. At Harvard, Mary Ann lived in Thayer and Eliot for one year before moving off campus. She concentrated in Linguistics and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations.

Links: ENOUGH! Plays to End Gun Violence https://www.enoughplays.com/

Mary Ann’s website, full of fun content about language: https://sites.google.com/view/maryannwalter/home

Mary Ann’s article about James by Percival Everett https://drive.google.com/file/d/15CwkOqlY0rvAzlxkX4PTr-goTN-TD5QS/view

The Mars House by Natasha Pulley https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/mars-house-9781639732333/

Author KJ Charles, writer of queer historical romance and fantasy https://kjcharleswriter.com