My name is Lena Faust, I was born in France and moved to Brookline MA when I was 9 and have lived there ever since. I am studying Psychology here at Umass Boston and have only been here 2 years after transferring from Massbay Community College.

I’m a big fan of many forms of media, though I like to dive into different things depending on the current phase I’m in, including video games, movies, books, anime and TV shows. My current phase is mostly reading with the occasional movie, (I am currently reading Tender Is The Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica, which is horrifying) and I am happy to say that aligns pretty well with this course. My favorite movies are Everything Everywhere All At Once, Goodwill Hunting, and maybe Whiplash due to recency bias.

My favorite book/series would probably be the Liveship Traders trilogy by Robin Hobb, despite me having read it around 2 years ago. It’s so long but I have a habit of getting overly into things and not being able to put a book down so once I got past there initial knowledge that it would be 3000 pages I loved every second. I’m a big fan of in depth character writing and fantasy that makes me feel like I’m embarking on an adventure along with the protagonists so this one was a lot of fun. Robin Hobb is a master at writing very human characters in such far fetched fantastical worlds and tying in the politics with what we experience in reality, which only makes her villains so much more hateable and her protagonists insanely sympathetic, I highly recommend checking her out!

I’m super excited for this class after finding our first short story really interesting.

~Lena Faust