Heidi Vornbrock Roosa

At Johns Hopkins, Heidi Vornbrock Roosa is a lecturer for the MA in Writing program.

Roosa has taught composition and creative writing at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. The Johns Hopkins MA in Writing program granted her the student-nominated 2015-2016 Award for Teaching Excellence. Heidi also provides critiques for private creative writing clients. Additionally, she teaches undergraduate humanities and formerly acted as the Gallery editor at The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review.

Heidi’s creative short work has appeared in Blackbird, The Normal School, Pear Noir!, 3QR, Literary Mama, and other literary journals. As well, her pseudonymous genre and crime fiction has been published by Shots (UK), has received the Malice Domestic Grant, and has been awarded a place on the British Crime Writers Association’s Debut Dagger shortlist.

Heidi holds a BA in Psychology, with an emphasis in educational psychology, from Goucher College, where she also wrote fiction under the mentorship of Madison Smartt Bell. She received an MA in Writing and a MLA in Liberal Arts from the Johns Hopkins University. For ten years, she coordinated neuropsychological research programs in HIV and dementia for the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She co-authored the study, “Self-Silencing in school: failures in student autonomy and teacher-student relatedness,” published in the journal, Social Psychology of Education, examining how students’ academic performance can be affected by their relationships with teachers. She has collaborated with JHU Psychological and Brain Sciences researchers on an ongoing study of narrative transportation, the phenomenon of being pulled into a story and coming back out with intentions and attitudes changed. Heidi writes and teaches on Baltimore and D.C. area campuses and from her attic office, overlooking her rather weedy garden. A dream perch for any writer.