QUILTER | TEACHER | AUTHOR | FOUNDER
The dozen writers in my Novel-in-a-Year cohort at StoryStudio Chicago are all serious readers as well as writers. Over the past months, they’ve pointed me toward THE CIDER HOUSE RULES, THE IDIOT, THE AGE OF LIGHT, and now Marilynne Robinson’s … Read More
My favorite bookshop is Fair Isle Books on Washington Island, Wisconsin. Though the size of a small bedroom, Fair Isle is everything a bookstore should be. Its petiteness in fact makes everything simpler—one doesn’t waste time browsing through books one … Read More
Anyone who reads my posts knows I was instrumental in the renovation and reopening of my small town’s single-screen movie theater a couple of years ago. Its official name is The Winterset Iowa Theater, but around here folks just call … Read More
A week or so before “The Call of the Wild” (the movie based on Jack London’s famous novella) opened at the Iowa Theater here in Winterset, I happened to read somewhere that the dogs in the film are computer generated … Read More
It’s been a long time since I read THE CATCHER IN THE RYE, and quite a few years since I saw a performance of HAMLET, but as I entered the world of novelist Elif Batuman’s THE IDIOT, I thought frequently … Read More
You’re not out to pasture but the green hues of the field start coming into focus when a fast-moving horse like me becomes the subject of tributes and end-of-career awards. In 2018, for example, The Quilt Show chose me as … Read More
In our mid-twenties, Liz Porter and I earned our quilting chops by teaching beginning classes in Winterset, Iowa, where we had recently learned the basics ourselves through an Iowa State University Extension class. After writing a popular book on quilted … Read More
Each month, when the Novel in a Year cohort I’m part of meets in person in Chicago, we catch up with each other on how our work is going, critique excerpts from two members, and receive master-class instruction on craft … Read More
I often call my most recently completed quilt my “latest, greatest.” That’s because the creative process is for me a kind of love affair. Conceptualizing a quilt, choosing the fabrics, cutting, sewing, watching the work take shape on my design … Read More
I’ve never lived in Mississippi, but my mother was born there in 1908. When I was a kid growing up in the 1950s, she took my brothers and me “home” from Houston to Rockport, near Hazlehurst, several times. In my … Read More