Cynthia is the author of the newly released The Complete Idiot's Guide to Shakespeare's Plays. Since 1998, she has published in-depth arts reports, profiles, and reviews for such publications as The New York Times, Playbill, San Francisco Chronicle, Andante, Houston Chronicle,Houston Press, Dallas Morning News, Dallas Observer,Opera Cues, San Antonio Express-News, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Cite, a quarterly architecture and design journal, ArtsHouston and others. She writes about theatre, books, opera, and stagecraft.  Cynthia is especially attracted to the lives and struggles of performing and visual artists. In her report Where Angels Fear to Tread (Houston Press, 2000), she investigated an East Texas community’s hostile reaction to a staging of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, produced by Raymond Caldwell, Kilgore College drama director and artistic director of the renowned Texas Shakespeare Festival. Cynthia is co-author of a brief biography of classical singer Roberta Dodd Crawford (Handbook of Texas online). She has profiled French photographer Robert Doisneau for a forthcoming monograph, the quirky Charles Dellschau, cellist Desmond Hoebig and the Houston Symphony Bad Boys of Cello, and the zany Art Guys, among others.  From 1998-2002 she served as the opera and classical music critic for the Houston Press. Since then she has covered internationally renowned opera productions for Playbill Arts, Houston Grand Opera’s Opera Cues, and various publications. From 1988-1997, she taught American and British literature, film, and English composition to undergraduates at Wharton Junior College (in southwest Houston) as a full-time faculty member. A native Texan, she holds a Master of Arts in English from the University of Texas at San Antonio, and a Bachelor of Arts in linguistics and Spanish from the University of Texas at Austin.