QUILTER | TEACHER | AUTHOR | FOUNDER
For several years, now, as I’ve pursued my love of fiction—as a writer rather than a reader—I’ve taken lots of classes, most of them at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival in Iowa City, a production of the University of Iowa, … Read More
Jennifer Egan’s The Keep was recommended by one of my teachers in a workshop at this year’s University of Iowa Summer Writing Festival. The class was on point of view, and my teacher used excerpts from The Keep and another … Read More
In the quilt world, common acronyms are FQ (Fat Quarter), UFO (Unfinished Object), QM (Quilt Market), and QOV (Quilt of Valor). My new career in fiction introduced me to a whole new set of shortcuts. WIP is one’s Work-in-Progress—and (BTW) … Read More
As those who know me know, I spent a decades-long career in the world of the American quilt—designing, writing, teaching, publishing, traveling the U.S. (and beyond) to connect with quilters everywhere and help them hone their skills. Writing—in the quilting … 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 … 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 … 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 … Read More
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
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
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