Dancing with the Lion: Becoming

Mother, writer, history professor, Homer fangirl and Alexander the Great geek.

Born and raised in Florida, Jeanne Reames counts Lakeland as herhometown.She attended the University of Florida (Go Gators!) where shemajored in English with a focus on creative writing. She still harbors a certain affection for the state because she knows it intimately, having been to virtually every county except a few in the panhandle, butdoesn't missthe unremitting humidity, or the crazy-big bugs.

Besides English, she has two other degrees from different schools in twodifferentsubjects (albeit all in the humanities). Currently, she's amember of the History faculty at the University of Nebraska, Omaha,where she teaches Greek, Macedonian and Ancient Near Eastern history.She's served as graduate program chair for the department, and acts asdirector of their Mediterranean Studies Program.

She lives inmidtown Omahain a neo-Tudor built in 1939. With her son grown and on his own, she shares her little house with two impertinent black cats,Licorice and Cecilia Iphigeneia, a Siamese named Kleopatra (afterAlexander's sister), a polite garden bunny dubbed Summer, and a feistyfox squirrel who argues with her over who has rights to the garden atwhat time of the day. In warm weather, her front porch will be occupiedby a key lime bush named Cyrus the Great, because she's still a FloridaGirl at heart.