WHY I WRITE

I love words. I love full sentences. And sentence fragments. As a little girl my favorite “toy” was the Letter People. Over time I became more and more intrigued by the way the 26 letters of the alphabet could be arranged and rearranged to tell stories that explore the beauty, emotion, and complexity of life.

For college, I headed to Oxford, Ohio, to study creative writing and English literature. But after graduating, I didn’t want to live as a starving artist, so I did what a lot of English majors do: I went to law school. That led to clerking for a federal judge, working for a big firm, and practicing higher education law. But I missed words. (Writing HIPAA policies wasn’t enough!) So I shifted gears and started writing print articles for magazines and newspapers. Then, not long ago, an editor handed me a recorder and asked me to try a radio piece. One thing led to another, and I now spend the bulk of my days writing podcast stories. I’m also the letters editor for AARP The Magazine and AARP Bulletin.

I’m happily married to my husband of 20 years. He’s a partner at a financial services firm. We live in Alexandria, Virginia, most of the time. But when the city gets to be too much, we retreat to the mountains of Colorado.

One last word: Words are a gift. A sacred gift from God. He is the Word. Beautiful, isn’t it? But what does it mean? Writing is my way of unpacking that mystery.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John 1:1