Living next door to the post office isn’t so great at 5 a.m. when the mail truck with its back-up beeper delivers Winterset’s mail, but other than that, my home’s location less than five minutes’ walk from the town square is a constant joy. If I need a greeting card, for example, I can scoot … Read more
Not long ago, I wrote about belonging to a book club for the first time ever. I love my book club in general, for many reasons, but specifically at this moment because of the book Luann chose for March. I had not heard of writer Garth Stein or The Art of Racing in the Rain, … Read more
A few weeks ago, I wrote about landing my first-ever gig as a fiction writer. Soon, at the “Paths to Publication” conference in Egg Harbor, WI, I’ll present “How I Found My Agent: One Writer’s Story.” Here’s the description: After you complete the long, sometimes lonely journey from Page One to the final draft, a … Read more
While in Nashville recently for QuiltCon, I took a break from the convention center to visit Parnassus Books, the classy independent bookstore established in 2011 by one of my favorite authors, Ann Patchett. My sidekick on the pilgrimage was my new writing buddy Frances O’Rourke Dowell. Frances and I gabbed about books and writing (and … Read more
Back in the late 2000s, a dream of Quilts of Valor founder Catherine Roberts was for our nation’s First Lady to make a Quilt of Valor in The White House. Since I was to be the nationally-known quilter who would keep the sewing machine threaded, I was the board member elected to write a letter … Read more
After viewing the Oscar-nominated film based on Lee Israel’s memoir Can You Ever Forgive Me? I picked up the book that inspired the movie, a slim volume describing Israel’s short career as a forger and seller of letters written by famous people like Noel Coward and Dorothy Parker. Israel was found out by the FBI and … Read more
I’m not sure how many times I traveled away from Winterset to teach or lecture about quilting over the years, but from 1993 to 2004 I kept a file titled Old Jobs. Scrolling through the document just now, I count one hundred and forty separate gigs, including Vermont Quilt Festival, Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival, Quilt Colorado, Sisters … Read more
“A girl can dream, Eric,” responds protagonist Grace Zacharias during a mostly-whispered scene in a public library in my novel, My Life with Shelley. Grace’s colleague, fellow high school English teacher Eric Hagermeyer, has asked Grace if she thinks the book she’s writing (the fake memoir of Frankenstein author Mary Shelley) is publishable. A few … Read more
At a holiday party in December, a new Winterset friend invited me to join her book club. In all my years of avid fiction and nonfiction consumption, I’ve never belonged to a formal circle of readers. Just being asked made me feel like I’d fallen in love! January’s title was The Book Thief by Markus … Read more
Back in October, national quilting celebrities Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims spent three days in Winterset. They’re hosts of the online program “The Quilt Show,” which they created and which has thousands of subscribers. The ten-person videography team spent Day One taping episodes at Piece Works quilt shop, Day Two at the Iowa Quilt Museum, … Read more