QUILTER | TEACHER | AUTHOR | FOUNDER
Because 2018 marks the 200th anniversary of the publication of Frankenstein,* articles about Mary Shelley and her famous novel are popping up everywhere. Having spent years studying Shelley, almost five writing my novel about her, I read them warily. You could … Read More
In 1986, my latest, greatest quilt was Lady Liberty Medallion. I was thirty-seven years old, living on a farm in Madison County, Iowa, my children age ten, six, and three, many of my youthful dreams still intact. I didn’t know I … Read More
During my years as a business co-owner and continent-crossing teacher of quilting, consuming fiction was a luxury only intermittently enjoyed. I probably managed only a dozen or so novels a year, reading them during air travel before Internet access on … Read More
Quilters are nice people, but we can be snobs. When Liz Porter and I discovered patchwork in the mid-1970s, machine quilting existed, but self-respecting quilters eschewed it, pointing to ugly, puffy hotel bedspreads. We quilted our tops by hand. In … Read More
A friend—a quilter who’s working on his first YA* manuscript himself—recently reminded me of Kathryn Stockett’s best-selling debut novel THE HELP. We were discussing our respective projects, and I described my agent’s early-on request for “comparables” (successful novels similar to … Read More
I was a fan of Rebecca Makkai even before I picked up her new novel THE GREAT BELIEVERS. Makkai was a featured author at the 2016 Washington Island Literary Festival and taught a workshop in the boathouse on our property. … Read More
Who drives two-plus hours to read three pages of FRANKENSTEIN aloud? Part of Iowa City’s annual Book Festival (tenth annual this year for the UNESCO City of Literature) was a continuous reading of Mary Shelley’s famous novel. Other events were … Read More
As I become comfortable in what I consider my third career (quilting industry business owner first, nonprofit advocate second, and now, novelist), I think often of my early love of narrative, the joy I remember from childhood at the very … Read More
Tomorrow, I leave for New York City—to spend the weekend with my oldest, Hannah Fons, and to meet my agent Ms. Evans in person. Hannah and I have some neat plans, including Friday night’s Art Battle New York, (a live painting competition … Read More
Like any self-respecting holder of an MA in literature, I lean toward the highbrow in my reading. This unwavering lifelong quest to improve my mind and comprehend the human condition has driven me through the pages of a number of … Read More