Author Photo by Jennifer Zdon, 2016
My Story
I received a Ph.D. in American Studies from Purdue University and was a literature professor at the University of New Orleans for 23 years. At the height of my career, I wrote two critically acclaimed books published by W. W. Norton:
Constance Fenimore Woolson: Portrait of a Lady Novelist (2016) was reviewed on the cover of the New York Times Book Review and named one of the ten best books of the year by the Chicago Tribune.
Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters (2018) was an indie bestseller and received rave reviews. It was chosen as one of the best books of the year by Library Journal, The Daily Mail, and A Mighty Girl.
I also wrote Writing for Immortality: Women and the Emergence of High Literary Culture in America, published by Johns Hopkins University Press, and I edited four books, including the Library of America edition of Constance Fenimore Woolson: Collected Stories.
I received four National Endowment for the Humanities awards, two for public scholarship. I wrote for the Washington Post, Literary Hub, and elsewhere. And I was interviewed on NPR, BBC Radio, CBS Sunday Morning, and more
On CBS Sunday Morning with Leslie Stahl, 2019
Yet, something was still missing . . .
In my heart of hearts, buried underneath all of my work as a scholar, professor, and writer, I had always wanted to write creatively. That dream died early, after two fiction workshops at university, in which I received the message that you either had it or you didn’t. When I got a ‘B’ in the second one, I decided that I didn’t. (They didn’t actually teach you how to write. As is the case still today in the vast majority of writing programs, you bring in your rough drafts and submit them to critique by your peers. In my view, this is no way to teach writing.)
Since I ‘couldn’t write creatively,’ I went to grad school to study literature instead. I didn’t allow myself to write fiction at any length again for thirty years. I studied and wrote about women who had made the audacious leap of devoting themselves to serious authorship. Essentially, I was writing about women who had done what I couldn’t imagine doing myself—and they had done it in the nineteenth century!
Finally, after two decades as a literature professor, I let myself take a big chunk of time and write fiction. It was during the pandemic and I was on medical leave. I couldn’t do much but lie on the couch, so why not? I wrote over 100,000 words of a meandering novel that didn’t have an ending. But essentially, I’d written a novel!
A lot of things happened during that time to propel me out of my life as it was then—stressful, unsatisfying, and unhealthy. I had developed an autoimmune disease (Meniere’s), I had high blood pressure, and tachycardia. And I had struggled with IBS and hormone imbalances for all of my adult life. (I know now that all of these are symptoms of a dysregulated nervous system.)
In order to shed my old skin, I did what many women have done and hit the road. I wanted a new life, but I had no idea what it would look like. I had two major narratives in my head: Under the Tuscan Sun (where Frances Mayes finds a new home) and Eat, Pray, Love (where Elizabeth Gilbert finds a new relationship). I thought I wanted to fall in love—with a new home or a new man, or preferably both.
What happened instead was that over three years of trial and tribulation I fell in love with my own heart and mind. I turned inward and found something that has given me a new life of meaning and purpose, something I can take with me anywhere, something that grounds me like no home or person could:
A Creative Practice
Getting to a place where I felt on firm ground has meant clearing a lot of blocks. I’ve learned a lot about the mind-body connection and how to regulate the autonomic nervous system.
As it has turned out, no book or course about writing has helped me find the essential, creative self I now know myself to be. The world is full of advice for writers, almost all of it focused on craft. But what I needed was more elemental than that—I needed to become grounded in my body and clear the mental blocks that were keeping me from believing in myself and finding out what I wanted to say in the first place.
One thing helped me more than anything: Quantum Energy Coaching. As I let go of the many limiting beliefs about myself and healed old wounds that were keeping me stuck, I found so much space open up inside me. New ideas and energies emerged effortlessly. It was as if I had unclogged the spring at the foundation of my being. Amazing things have been happening since it started flowing again.
I completed a Master’s in Creative Writing (with distinction) at the University of Manchester, studying with Jeanette Winterson.
I made huge leaps in my fiction writing and wrote the beginning of a novel that won the PFD Literary Prize for the best dissertation. (This novel is still in progress.)
I have since written a full, complete draft of a totally new novel and am now in the revision phase.
I held a beautiful, successful writing retreat that fulfilled all my dreams about bringing women together and finding our voices in community.
I have begun a podcast and book club as part of my Substack newsletter, Audacious Creative Lives.
As part of my own healing journey, I have also become a Quantum Energy Coaching practitioner myself.
My greatest desire now is to continue developing my own creative practice as well as help others find theirs.
In my new life, on the beach near Edinburgh, 2024