Author, Editor of Memoir & Narrative Nonfiction
Family. Home. What is left after parents are gone and you set out to find your life in the terrain that opens around you? I have returned for my annual writing retreat at The Big Six Country Club, our family cabin in the Sandhills of…
I’m back in my home in Santa Fe following my teaching gig at the Yale conference. (Here’s the view from my front door the first morning I woke up in my house!) And now I am getting on to the business of being a…
What a heady week it was. My class on Memoir Writing at Yale was so big it overflowed the assigned room and we had to move across the street to an auditorium: Sudler Auditorium in Harkness Hall which is very near Sterling Memorial Library, the…
Later this month I’ll be on the faculty of the International Women’s Writing Guild (IWWG) 34th annual summer conference beginning June 24 on the campus of Yale University: http://www.iwwg.org. The Guild’s goal is, “personal and professional empowerment of women through writing,” and it draws women…
My head is swimming with houses. I’ve looked at so many potential homes in and around Santa Fe, I can hardly think. Ever had real estate overload? When I get back to the ranch where I am staying, I have friends to greet me. Here…
After a year of travels through Europe and repeated treks across the U.S., I have come home to Santa Fe. The elegance of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains holds me in its palm. I have many stories to write, and I am eager to settle.…
Five hours via train and express bus operated by Deutsche Bahn Railways and I was in Prague. A quick weekend dash to the East from the Village of Schwaebisch Hall where I have been submerged in German. Sometimes I can not keep my sentences straight…
Schwaebisch Hall—November 11, 2010 It’s the end of my first week of an Intensive German Language course at the Goethe Institute in Schwaebisch Hall, Germany. Those years of college language courses creep back into consciousness. Grammar flows onto the page, but still I stand in…
Wish I’d had a photo of me plunging through high water in Piazza San Marco the other day. I’d share it here, but it will have to live in memory. The crowds were queuing for the wooden walkways, but I had on knee waders.…
Venezia—October 27, 2010 The year began with my mother ill and dying from cancer, segued into a solo trip to Europe to follow the trail of my parents’ post-war journey across the Continent, and settled into a long period of isolation at my Great Plains…