Karen Tolchin has been teaching contemporary literature, creative writing, and film at the college level for a whopping two decades. She holds a bachelor’s from Bryn Mawr College and a doctorate in English and American Literature from Brandeis University, which explains both her stores of literary knowledge and her impressive array of nervous tics. Her book, Part Blood, Part Ketchup: Coming of Age in American Literature and Film, was cited in William Safire’s New York Times “On Language” column (2007). In 2015, she won a university-wide award for teaching excellence at Florida Gulf Coast University. Her latest venture is the DēKa Storytelling Institute, LLC. At home in Naples, Florida, with her son Charlie and her husband Tom, she has finally accumulated more seashells than books.