Erin Kiley

Yes

I went to Buena Vista University and got a degree in English and Mass Communication. After graduation, I spent two years as a newspaper reporter in Des Moines.

Then I moved to Manhattan as a New York City Teaching Fellow (an Americorp program). For three years I taught seventh and eighth grade English at a struggling school in the South Bronx while earning a master's degree in education from Fordham University.

Now I teach freshman composition at Old Dominion University in Virginia, where I'm earning a master of fine arts degree in (writing) poetry. I love my job and writing, but I miss my friends and family in NYC and Iowa.

Right now, mostly cheerleading memories are cropping up: Rolling down a big hill in our uniforms; making a giant Smurfy (Sprite and a big blue Pixie Stix) in the Ogden High School bathroom with disastrous, fountainy consequences; when we made the big paper circle (for the football players to run through) using our painted footprints, then had to crawl to the locker room to avoid getting paint on the gym floor (we really didn't think that one through); and singing to Austin on the way back from competition. I haven't thought about that stuff in ages. Good times.