Brooks S. Moriarty

Instructor in English
Barton Evans and H. Andrea Neves Instructorship, 2013
Appointed
2008
Brooks Sheridan Moriarty

You fertilize and mow, attend the slow
Growth of apples readying for harvest,
And settle into place like leaves or snow
Unfold like a letter delivered as addressed.
— Charlie Pratt, “Into Place”

Education

B.A. Yale University

Diploma Phillips Exeter Academy

M.A. University of Virginia

All But Dissertation University of Virginia

Biography

I first settled into place at Exeter as a student in the 1980s. A math geek from the Midwest, I was a little scared and a lot excited about my new school. Teachers such as Charlie Pratt helped me locate my seat at the Harkness table. As my identity began to take shape — as Exeter enabled me to be the person I was supposed to be — I found myself sitting in an English class senior fall and thinking, this is what I want to do. So here I am, teaching English at Exeter and trying my best to do for kids what teachers like Charlie Pratt did for me.

I first read Emily Dickinson’s poetry in the fall of my senior year at Exeter. Her mathematical imagination (“The Brain — is wider than the Sky” — ) appealed to my math-geek roots. And her music, the music of broken church hymns, resonated with the songs my guitar teacher, Eric Sinclair (who is teaching some of my advisees today), was helping me learn.

I like to spend my free time picking on a banjo or guitar with colleagues in the English Department. And I like to get outside into the sharp angles and tight spaces of the New England landscape. I live with my wife, Genny Beckman Moriarty (who works in the Communications Department at Exeter), and our three sons (Conor '18, Liam and Emmet) in Bancroft Hall, where I am dorm head. I coach JV boys lacrosse with Dave Hudson, my own lacrosse coach when I was a prep. Time spent on the field and in the dorm with students is the most rewarding part of my work day. In summers I am the waterfront director at a camp in Maine, where I teach swimming and live happily unplugged.