After working for 25 years as a newspaper reporter in South Carolina and Florida, a magazine editor for McCalls and Woman’s Day in New York, and finally as a freelance writer,  Lucy became an English teacher in a public middle school in Connecticut.

Almost instantly, this journalist realized she was living her best story and she began taking notes.

Her book, A Small Civilization, Journal of a 7th grade classroom, published in November 2021, pulls the curtain back on the reality of life in a school, teaching 12- and 13-year-olds. Startling, laughable and heart-wrenching events from 13 years are compressed into “one”  year that reveals the small civilization she discovered.

“With edgy humor and revealing insight, a journalist-turned-teacher finds her ‘best story,’ witnessing firsthand the metamorphosis that takes place in her students—physically, intellectually, hormonally, socially, magically, and sometimes tragically—over a pivotal 13th year.”