I was twenty when I first set foot in Manhattan. It was March of 1994. I joined my cousin and friends on a fast tour of New York City: an afternoon in Central Park; an evening at The Metropolitan Opera, watching Franco Zeffirelli’s rendition of La Bohème;
Read more →My daughter and her class are reading Little House in the Big Woods, the classic by Laura Ingalls Wilder. It’s the first in a beloved series based on Wilder’s life. With my kids’ school moving online this month amid the pandemic, I’ve been a teacher by proxy.
Read more →Once upon a time not long ago, I was a business writer for PayScale.com. I covered all things careers and employment in my first full-time, work-from-home gig. After several years as an editor in D.C., covering Congressional policy on energy and the environment, I relished the more-relaxed
Read more →Last month, the Authors Guild released a report on what it means to be an author in the 21st Century. Some of the findings are grim. But, as author Joanna Penn suggests in her review of the report, they don’t include people like her: independent authors who’ve
Read more →Fine art inspires me. If my brain ever feels hollowed out—as it sometimes does in the thick of motherhood—I spend an afternoon strolling the galleries of Chicago’s Art Institute. Without fail, it offers me a new window into a story I’m mulling, writing, or editing. Many of
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