After a lifetime of private creative writing, I was seized by a subject too important to hide in my journal or in a letter to friends.   Since my first lengthy stay in Amsterdam in 2001, I have been visiting and researching, writing and speaking about the Holocaust and resistance there.  Living in a house where Jewish people were hidden inspired my novel, An Address in Amsterdam, published in October 2016 by She Writes Press.  It’s about a young Jewish woman who risks her life in the resistance, and has gained more attention than I ever hoped.  The book won the Sarton Women’s Book Award for HIstorical Fiction, and is a Kirkus Indie Book of the Month.

Since it was published, I’ve given talks at more than 70 events in thirteen states and four countries about what the dilemmas and actions of the Dutch in 1940-45 have to say to our times.  The book provides both warning and inspiration.  Around my home state, the Vermont Humanities Council Speakers’ Bureau sponsors two of my talks:  Resistance Then and Now:  Learning from the Dutch, and Anne Frank’s Neighbors:  What Did They Do?  I always explore the many shades of grey in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, and the wrenching choices which confronted good people.  In my earlier writing life, I also wrote a nonfiction book in 1987 (Women MBAs:  A Foot in the Door, G.K. Hall), and contributed a chapter to Ourselves Growing Older (Simon and Schuster).  

To develop my craft as a writer to be worthy of this topic, I earned my MFA at Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2005.  Since then, I have published poetry in literary journals as well as gaining recognition for my essay, “Freeing the Hidden Camp,” in The Journal’s contest.

I have been a resident at the Vermont Studio Center and a graduate assistant at Vermont College of Fine Arts’ MFA program.  To keep on learning, I attend writing conferences such as The Muse and the Marketplace, the Associated Writing Programs, Write Angles, and the International Women’s Writing Guild.  For more than thirty years, I have studied with Deena Metzger, the author of the invaluable Writing for Your Life.

Since 1982, my other work has been as a facilitator bringing people together for a purpose, which I still enjoy after more than thirty years working throughout the US and elsewhere.  A gardener and passionate reader, I live with my longtime partner, astronomer Joanna Rankin, in Burlington, Vermont.