uprush

After graduating from Willamette University, I spent the most of next thirty years teaching, counseling, mothering, wifing and of course, writing. For a couple of years, though, I did none of this, preferring to live a little. While I was working as a counselor, my writing appeared in small literary magazines and professional publications. Since retirement, I’ve had the time to write four novels and two screenplays. The first book used my teaching life as inspiration, and served as a way to leave a profession I loved. The second story focused on my then-prodigal son, the hockey player. I believe he is relieved that it has not yet been published even though he served as my consultant on the icy details. My third novel, The Solarium, is an intimate, almost true, story of four women lot like my own long time friends. Graffiti Grandma, examines the lives of an old woman and the underworld of the homeless in living the forest nearby. The next book, coming out this year, tells of Edith who wakes up one morning as a widow. If it appears that my protagonists are growing old, well, so am I. My stories and essays, as well as the novels, reflect my observations of women’s lives and the people who inhabit them: the children, husbands, parents, friends, strangers who happen by and change everything.