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I was born in Syracuse, NY, an only child. My father died of rheumatic heart disease when I was 13—an event that has probably colored every word I've written. From first to twelfth grades I attended a Catholic parochial school, St. John the Baptist Academy, which inspired Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog, plays a major role in Script and Scribble, and makes an appearance (heavily disguised) in my novel Duet. I have a B.A. from Boston University and an M.A. from Syracuse, both in English literature.
For three years I was a reporter and drama critic for the New Haven Advocate. For 10 years I worked at the (now, alas, defunct) Foundry Book Store in New Haven, where, after seeing my books through the writing/agenting/editing/ publishing process, I got to see them at the end of the cycle, being bought and read by actual people. After I left New Haven for New York City, I was in on the ground floor at Muze, which was the first purveyor of "content" for the use of bookstores and online bookselling, music, and video sites. (I researched and wrote about literary fiction and books on gardening and cookery until I became, eventually, the resident copy editor for all departments.) My publications include twelve novels, two works of nonfiction, several short stories, and many essays, including the now-famous diagram of a sentence by Sarah Palin in Slate and a weird-coincidence essay ("My Duet with the Bushes") in the London Review of Books. My first novel, Family Matters, was read aloud on BBC Radio 4. I was a contributor to the New York Times blog "Draft." For Duet, I was awarded a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts. In connection with my books on diagramming sentences (Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog) and handwriting (Script and Scribble), I was interviewed dozens of times--by Leann Hansen and Scott Simon on NPR, twice by Leonard Lopate on WNYC, on radio call-in shows from Pasadena to Peoria to Boston, and by the Canadian Broadcasting System, the BBC, Radio Scotland, and Irish Radio (RTÉ), as well as Voice of America, which resulted in a thrilling onslaught of emails from people all over the world. Over the years, I've lived in Boston, New Haven, Brooklyn, and now Amherst, Mass. My daughter, also an only child, lives with her husband and my three grandchildren in California, where she and my son-in-law are law professors and the kids are busy growing up too fast. For the past several years, I've been a freelance copy editor for various publishers and two alumni magazines. Besides reading and working, I take long daily walks, try not to obsess over politics, feed my addiction to crossword puzzles, do needlework, cook, garden, play the piano (badly), draw (worse), keep a diary (as I've done for most of my life), visit the family in California, and delight in my network of good friends—and, of course, in Fred, my lovable wire-haired Dachshund--chipmunk chaser, walking companion, green-pepper connoisseur, watchdog. Unlike Sister Bernadette's annoying animal, however, Fred barks only if he has a really good reason. |
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