Jane Austen’s Bath, England

The formal and elegant city of Bath is an exquisite example of a planned  city. If “city” and “jumbled” go together for you, a city as harmonious as Bath will take a bit of getting used to. Built along the Avon river and its gentle slopes, white and cream buildings form grand avenues and crescents beyond the town…

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Meditation Upon a Frozen River

Is nature so important to us because it’s the ultimate creative force? In my writing and in my life, setting, and being out of doors, is important to me. I find that experiencing nature directly – feeling the sharp prick of a thorn, hearing the soft whoosh of a plop of snow, recoiling from the scent…

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Historic Lamb House, Home of Henry James, in Rye, East Sussex

Many artists and writers find inspiration in landscape or in the built environments of cities and towns. What attracts a writer to a given location? A drawing of a house is what drew author Henry James  (1843-1916), an American who lived in Britain, to the the historic seaport town of Rye, in East Sussex, England. Enchanted…

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New York’s South Street Seaport

It’s hard to think of bustling, spire-jammed Manhattan as an island, with miles of river frontage. For centuries, the waterfront was meant for work, not pleasure. But in the last several decades that’s changed, and redevelopment is occuring all along the coasts, notably Battery Park and more recently, Hudson Yards. The South Street Seaport waterfront…

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2019 Events

Calling All Poets Series (CAPS), an organization that hosts readings and other events throughout the Hudson Valley, invited me to be part of The ’60s @ 50 at the lovely restaurant/jazz club Trattoria Marbella in Ellenville, N.Y.

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2018 Events

Events included #YeahYouWrite (held at South Edison Restaurant in Montauk) and The New Left Forum, with a panel on fiction and political activism.

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Community Sharing: “Barn Quilts” and Little Free Libraries

This summer my husband, Mark, and I spent a few weeks in the Adirondacks and southern Quebec. We took a ferry across Lake Champlain from Essex, NY, to Burlington, VT, then drove north across the border into Canada and along the Richelieu River, stopping at small towns along the way. This kind of aimless wandering,…

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2017 Events

This year’s venues included Barnes & Nobel in Union Square, Bluestockings Bookstore & Cafe, and The Crazy Fork in Riverhead, Long Island.

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Authors and Books That Have Inspired Me

  Eleanor Frances Lattimore: Fair Bay Like a painter using a few delicate brush strokes, Lattimore creates in this children’s book a rich, imagistic world from few words, illustrating the principal that less can truly be more. This is the first book I fell in love with. It made me a reader and instilled in…

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