I discovered Marilyn Nelson’s powerful stories and amazing poetry - Carver: A Life in Poems , A Wreath for Emmett Till, and Fortune’s Bones – several years ago. I’m so pleased to see Nelson’s work spotlighted on The Brown Bookshelf‘s: 28 Days Later, 2009 campaign (including her latest, The Freedom Business, which I have yet [...]
I’m in the middle of A Novel First Draft in 70 Days class and have been thinking a lot about process. A while back I posted about the promises we make to our writing selves and a quote I love from the beginning of Mary Oliver’s A Poet’s Handbook about appointments with the muse. One [...]
Stephen Fry in The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within has this to say about writing poetry: “It can take weeks to assemble and polish a single line of poetry… poems take time… they are to be lived with and endlessly revisited.” Fry could easily be talking about picture books. They take ages to [...]
The other day, Kirby Larson shared a quote by Graham Greene which struck a chord with me: “One does have to accept that one walks in a particular way.” Wise words. After all, we *do* each have our own particular way of “walking,” our own particular schedules, obligations, lives. And if we want to spend [...]
I've lived and traveled around the world, but now make my home in California.
By day, I teach; evenings and many weekends, I write.
My teaching, reading, and writing eventually led to a Master's degree in Language and Literacy and, later, an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
My first picture book, BLUE ON BLUE, is forthcoming from Beach Lane Books (Simon and Schuster).