Grandma Go-Go is the name my sisters and I gave our paternal grandmother, because of the white, leg-hugging pleather “Go-Go” boots she often wore. Grandma Go-Go was a great storyteller. She grew up on a farm, and one day during lambing season, when she was quite young, she ran into the house yelling, “We have a black sheep! We have a black sheep!” Her father asked, “Is it you?” Telling this story, Grandma Go-Go would throw her head back and laugh and laugh, transforming the otherwise disreputable black sheep label into something to covet.
My fondness for Grandma Go-Go’s black sheep story points to the kind of writer I am. I’m drawn to stories about people responding to the absurdities lurking beneath life’s quotidian demands. For me, this almost always has to do with characters dealing with losses ineptly enough to be wryly funny, but also sad and hopeful. Arising from my academic research on how people become wise, my stories often explore loss born of something simple: a misunderstanding, a white lie, a secret, a misstep, a poor-me moment—something that sets off a chain reaction of unexpected havoc and, perhaps, the need for reckoning. Self-forgiveness and self-unforgiveness show up often, even when I think I’m writing about something else. Writing gives my life meaning, no small thing at this point as the years go breathtakingly fast.
I love running and hiking, and both are crucial to my writing process; they provide the interludes I need to sort out and understand whatever it is I am writing about. For years, I volunteered at a sanctuary for rescued farm animals, which meant an awful lot to me.
