The Power of One Writer
Back Yards, Ethiopia and Children's Books
author • speaker • teacher • volunteer

Life comes at you…

…with a whoosh and a whomp. Yes, I knew it was slick in Vermont. I slid down the hill to the gym the first morning before 6 a.m. in the dark bending my knees, staying low to the ground and trying to remember everything I knew about staying up. But I strode out of the

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Hard to believe…

…that I first taught in the MFA program at Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2006. Showing up in Vermont in January and July? Sleeping in a dorm room?  Eating cafeteria food? Hmmmm. Boot Camp for Writers!  Who thought THAT was a good idea? During the rest of the year, I read my students’ material…the

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Creep

New Year often feels like a time for a big leap–or at least a big step. Preferably forward. Three years ago at the end of December I headed to Chicago for what became an intense year of meeting fans of Lanie. Could anything be sweeter than talking to readers of that age? Listening to those youngsters tell me about gardens and yards and

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Christmas ho ho ho

Christmas joy–in the house shared by the teacher and nurse who lived in Maji–the only other English-speakers besides our family–and more recently!

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Moving

This is my first blog post in the new home for Write at Your Own Risk, and as I type this, I have a feeling it might show up under my WordPress blog instead.  So it’s an experiment that might go nowhere at all…like so many of my pages in so many of my drafts.

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Old and new

This summer, I loved my time at the Culture and Heritage camp organized by Abshiiro Kids and other volunteers near DC–and it gave me one of my favorite fall stories.  I was walking with Noh and his class–the rabbits–to the classroom where I was going to tell stories and talk about growing up in Ethiopia. 

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When disaster knocks

Alas. Suffering…who needs it? No thank you. But no matter how many times we decline the invitation, most of us discover the knocking never stops.  And often the guest barges right in and stays. I can’t look at any of the pictures of Hurricane Sandy without remembering that day when we were finally, FINALLY let

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The myth of the solitary artistic genius and me

All the published authors I know are introverts. One of my friends was talking about being part of an incoming class in the Vermont College MFA in children’s writing.  At the get-to-know-you session, people were asked to move here and there in the room depending on such things as where in the world they live…or

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