Welcome to my site…
After earning my MFA in creative writing, I began a career in writing and publishing. I’ve been an editor and writer for reference book and education publishers, including Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Scholastic Press, and National Geographic Learning. I’ve written professional profiles and articles for MIT and Radcliffe, as well as graphic novelizations of Greek myths.
On this site I offer observations and links to things I’m reading, hearing, and seeing, as well as to what I’m cooking! as I work on a novel set in Cornwall and London in the 1930s. Current tagline: A house with a history. A woman with a future. Two nations on the brink.
I hope you’ll join me here from time to time, Please comment on my posts!
What I’m Reading
Hell of a Book
Hell of a Book by Jason Mott is a brave exploration of Blackness from the perspective of a successful author on book tour who is enamored with a funeral director/undertaker, a young boy who haunts him, and a boy (who may be the same boy or not) who is shot down by...
These Walls Between Us
As a white woman with a long-standing interest in understanding race and racism in the United States, I have read many books that examine the structures of racial inequality in the United States and beyond. Books such as The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee, The Color of...
The Museum of Innocence
The narrator of this novel, Kemal Basmaci, presents this story of a destructive love affair as though he is giving the reader a tour of a private museum that he has constructed from the detritus of the affair--cigarette butts, maps, movie posters and stills, household...
What I’m Seeing and Hearing
Hadestown: It’s a Sad Song, But We Sing It Anyway
As the opening number of the musical Hadestown began during the Broadway in Boston production, I felt a surge of patriotism. What a great thing our American musical tradition is, that we can blend blues and Broadway and ragtime to create this fabulous mix of rhythm...
Stacey Abrams!
When I think of her name, I hear it to the tune of the opening of "Oklahoma!" What a woman she is, and I had the chance to hear and see her live, along with about 1500 other people here in my hometown, in a conversation with local public radio host Meghna Chakrabarti....
Hurricane Diane
I loved this fast-moving and delightful comedy, performed entirely by women/gender-neutral actors. The actors, especially Rami Magron, who played Diane/Dionysus, commanded my attention from the moment she stepped onto the stage. She was truly a force of nature! The...
What I’m Cooking
Brown Rice and Swiss Chard
An astonishing, delightful, and moving adaptation of Moby Dick kept me fascinated for nearly three and a half hours at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, MA the other night. The set and props range from the elegant to the primitive. Having read the novel...
Farro, Lime, and Basil
A recipe for halloumi, corn, basil, tomatoes, and lime caught my eye, but I didn't have any halloumi. But I had farro and chick peas as well as fresh basil, corn, cherry tomatoes, and a lime, so I air-fried the chick peas (after tossing in olive oil and Trader Joe's...
The Pleasure of Small Appliances
In the past couple of years I've given into the lure of small cooking appliances. Rice cooker, multi-use pressure cooker, air fryer: as someone who wants to avoid clutter and who has a small kitchen, I resisted them for a long time. But recently I've figured out how...
What I’m Thinking
A Change of Sex
November 20 is Transgender Day of Remembrance, and that has gotten me thinking about the great reporter and historian Jan Morris. Morris will have died exactly one year ago on November 20, 2020, at the age of 94. Morris was not murdered in a hate crime, unlike those...
The Pleasure of Reading While Waiting
I spent a lovely morning sitting on a hard red bench in room filled with the smell of tires at Costco. It wasn't the bench or the smell that made the morning lovely, but the fact that I had brought along the October issue of Harper's magazine to read while I waited....
To Travel or Not
I am looking forward to a trip to Istanbul, planned for mid-October 2021. And yet we wonder whether travel means exposure to the Delta variant or other variants that might be even more pernicious. A recent episode of NPR's 1A discussed this issue, and one caller...
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