She has held visiting positions at the University of Queensland (Australia), the University of Geneva (Switzerland), Capital Normal University of Beijing (China), the University of Newcastle (UK), the University of Venice at Ca' Foscari (Italy), and the Siena School for the Liberal Arts (Italy) as well as lectured at the University of Sydney (Australia), Macquarie University (Australia), the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa), and the University of Stellenbosch (South Africa) and held a fellowship at Trinity College Dublin. It was at UM that she earned tenure (in 1981) and became a full professor (in 1984). She has since taught linguistics at Smith College, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Georgetown University, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and Swarthmore College. in Romance Languages and Literatures in 1973, both from Harvard University, then did a postdoctoral year in Linguistics at MIT. She received her BA in mathematics in 1970 and her Ph.D. She has five children, seven grandchildren, and currently lives outside Philadelphia.

For thirteen years she had a cat named Taxi, and liked to go outside and call, 'Taxi!' to make the neighbors wonder.

She loves to garden and bake bread, and even dreams of moving to the woods and becoming a naturalist.Īt various times her house and yard have been filled with dogs, cats, birds, and rabbits. Donna Jo Napoli is both a linguist and a writer of children's and YA fiction.

Hush by Donna Jo Napoli