I grew up in Kansas, surrounded by prairie, but 42 years ago I came to Nantucket to visit a friend who introduced me to the love of my life. Charley and I have now lived on Nantucket for 40 years--year-round, as we say,
I have a bachelor's and master's degree in English literature from the University of Missouri at Kansas City. Before settling down to write and have children, I taught English at various colleges and traveled, living in Paris, Amsterdam and Helsinki and had short stories published in literary reviews. My first novel, Stepping, was published by Doubleday in 1980, and started me off on the career I've always wanted. I was a Fellow at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in 1980 and in 2015, I received the RT Career Achievement Award in Mainstream Fiction. In In In 2022, my Christmas novel Let It Snow was a Hallmark Christmas movie called Nantucket Noel.
