I've dreamed about being many things in my life: professional baseball player; graphic designer; psychologist; anti-nuclear activist; poet; advocate for animals; lawyer; university professor; and novelist.

(Can you guess which of these dreams have come true?)*

Today, I'm a novelist and writing teacher.

The great thing about being a novelist is that I get to be whoever I want to be! At the moment, I'm a male firefighter, a wrongfully convicted woman newly released from prison, and an 87-year-old former state attorney general . . . I love writing novels!

The great thing about being a writing teacher is that I get to bear witness to writers like you as you become whoever you want to be, too. I adore working with women like you who write novels.

My debut novel This Is How It Begins, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards, the Sarton Women's Book Award, the Foreword Indies Book of the Year Award, and won a bronze medal in the Independent Publishers Book Awards. I won the Maureen Egan Writers Exchange Award from Poets and Writers and was thrilled when Poets & Writers Magazine named me one of "5 More Women Writers Over 50 to Watch." Whoa . . . you can make dreams come true!

I hold advanced degrees in fiction writing and creative writing pedagogy (from Antioch University LA), certificates in adult education and facilitation, have provided feedback to more than 300 writers on their manuscripts, and have taught online writing classes to thousands of writers from all over the world.

*And . . . drumroll, please . . . here are the other dreams I've made come true:

Yep, I've been an anti-nuclear activist and advocate for animals. I studied psychology and graphic design, took poetry classes, and drafted new laws while working as a lobbyist for animal welfare issues. If I'd been twenty years younger when I tried out for a short-lived, pro women's baseball team, I could have played second base at Fenway Park. Instead, I got to talk about it on NPR's "Only A Game," my first exposure as a professional writer, which was pretty damned sweet.

Still have questions about me? Learn more here.

"One of Stonecoast’s fundamental values is to foster culturally diverse writers who have a clear understanding of the role writers play in social activism ... We are very proud of our program ... as one of the nation's top five low-residency programs."

Our guest for dinner on Sunday, June 7, is Robin Talbot. Robin is the associate director of Stonecoast MFA at the University of Southern Maine where she is also the faculty advisory to the Stonecoast Review. Robin has written two scripts for documentary films: A Call to Action: A Community's Dream, which outlines the struggle for civil rights in Maine; and Starting Over: Understanding and Supporting Refugee and Immigrant Experiences. Robin holds an MA in arts administration and is an expert in the area of writing for social justice. 

She has served as a board member for Black Education and Cultural History, the NAACP Excellence in Education (Portland Branch), the University of Southern Maine’s Multicultural Curriculum Sub-committee, Women’s Resource Center Advisory Board, Festival of Arts and Scholarship committee, and People of Color, Voices in Unity Conference.

"I realized with certainty, half-way through the book, that I was going to have to write my own darn novel, because the novel that I’d wanted to read—the novel I’d bought and was holding in my hand—was not the novel I hoped it would be."

Our guest for dinner on Thursday, September 3, is Susan Conley. Susan is a Mainer and the author of four books including her new novel Elsey Come Home. Her memoir The Foremost Good Fortune, was the first book she published and it was an Oprah Magazine Top Ten Pick, an Entertainment Weekly Memoir to Read, and the winner of the Maine Literary Award for Memoir. Her novel Paris Was the Place was a People Magazine Top Pick, a Slate Magazine Summer Read, and an Elle Magazine Readers Prize Selection. Her third book was a whole other animal: a photography collaboration called Stop Here This is the Place, which was a Real Simple Magazine Must Read and also won the Maine Literary Award for Publishing Excellence.

Susan's writing has appeared in other places like The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Harvard Review, The North American Review, The New England Review, Ploughshares, and other magazines. She's received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Maine Arts Commission, and the Massachusetts Arts Council. She grew up in Maine and loved living in Vermont, California, Boston and China before she moved back to Portland, Maine, where she lives now. 

Susan is on the faculty of the Stonecoast Writing Program at the University of Southern Maine and is the co-founder of the Telling Room, a creative writing lab for kids in Portland.

"There are very few things I would love to do other than a life of writing."

Our guest for dinner on Tuesday, October 20, is Lily King. Lily grew up in Massachusetts and received her B.A. in English Literature from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and her M.A. in Creative Writing from Syracuse University. She has taught English and Creative Writing at several universities and high schools in this country and abroad.

Lily’s first novel, The Pleasing Hour (1999) won the Barnes and Noble Discover Award and was a New York Times Notable Book and an alternate for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her second, The English Teacher, was a Publishers Weekly Top Ten Book of the Year, a Chicago Tribune Best Book of the Year, and the winner of the Maine Fiction Award. Her third novel, Father of the Rain (2010), was a New York Times Editors Choice, a Publishers Weekly Best Novel of the Year and winner of both the New England Book Award for Fiction and the Maine Fiction Award. It was translated into various languages.

Lily's novel, Euphoria, won the Kirkus Award for Fiction 2014, the New England Book Award for Fiction 2014 and was a finalist in the National Book Critics Circle Awards. Euphoria was named one of the 10 Best Books of 2014 by The New York Times Book Review. It was included in TIME's Top 10 Fiction Books of 2014 and the Amazon Best Books of 2014. Reviewed on the cover of The New York Times Book Review, Emily Eakin called Euphoria, “a taut, witty, fiercely intelligent tale of competing egos and desires in a landscape of exotic menace.” The novel is being translated into numerous languages and a feature film is underway.

Her new novel, Writers and Lovers, is forthcoming in March 2020.

Lily is the recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship and a Whiting Writer's Award. Her short fiction, essays, and reviews have appeared in many publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, and several anthologies.

Saturday, April 25 – Friday, May 1 with special guest Monica Wood

Saturday, June 6 – Friday, June 12 with special guest Robin Talbot 

Saturday, August 29 – Friday, Sep 4 with special guest Susan Conley

Saturday, Oct 17 – Friday, Oct 23 with special guest Lily King