PHOTO GALLERY

A recent photo of me with my three sons

As part of the Amelia Island Book Festival, I had the privilege of spending a morning at Hilliard Middle Senior High School in Florida. English teacher Natasha Drake orchestrated a "poetry tea" for female students, and we had a glorious time sharing words and scones and Earl Grey tea! I'm pictured here with Ms. Drake and some of the senior girls, several of whom are interested in becoming writers themselves. Their curiosity and questions led me to create the new student resources page on my site.

The "poetry tea" took place in the Home Ec room, where teachers used their own heirloom china and linens to set the mood, and students and teachers alike contributed traditional (and delicious!) treats such as cucumber sandwiches, lemon curd, Devonshire cream, and tea biscuits.

Books Plus is a major sponsor of the Amelia Island Book Festival, and owner Don Shaw always makes authors feel welcome. I'm chatting here with one of the women who attended my workshop on "Using Poetry as a Communications Tool."

It was my good fortune to be seated with members of Amelia Island's "Friends of the Library" during the AIBF's lunchtime riverboat cruise. In addition to chatting about the joys of reading and the sight of sunshine after several days of rain, we laughed with featured speaker Claire Cook (Must Love Dogs) talk about her journey from obscurity to the bestseller list.

I was honored to be the workshop leader for Ramona United Methodist Church's first UMW retreat. (Who knew that, just a few weeks later, most of these women would be forced from their homes as the California wildfires blazed?) This was taken after the P.J. Parade and before the Great Ping-Pong Pound-off; danger was the furthest thing from our mind! (Well, there was that rogue serve that almost took out my left ear...)

The audience at my reading in Martinez, CA, was attentive, diverse, and responsive--everything an author loves! Librarian Patrick Remer made me feel very welcome and I'm already looking forward to my next visit!

Middle schoolers write great poetry! These students at Greer Middle School in Greer, SC, shared some of their work with me after I talked about "The Five Ps of Powerful Poetry."

Me perched on the porch of "Hillside House," in Concord, Massachusetts, where Louisa May Alcott spent her early teenage years.

What the Alcott family called "Hillside House," Nathaniel Hawthorne called "The Wayside." He bought and occupied the residence four years after the Alcotts moved out. The barn on the right was the inspiration for those lively "Roderigo! Roderigo! Saaaaave me!" scenes in Little Women.

Orchard House is right next door to The Wayside. (The Hawthornes and Alcotts were neighbors for 12 years.) Louisa May was 20 when her family moved into this house. It served as the model for the March family home in Little Women, which Louisa May wrote sitting at a shelf desk in her bedroom (perfectly preserved behind those two windows on the top right floor).

This is Walden Pond, located only a few miles from the Alcott houses. We were able to walk a trail all the way around the perimeter. Amazing that Louisa May, Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson all lived in the tiny little town of Concord at the same time! I tried to drink a lot of water while I was there, just in case...

It's just a short drive from Concord to Sudbury, MA--home of the inn made famous by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, "Tales of a Wayside Inn." Henry Ford bought the inn in 1923; he moved and reconstructed a Redstone school from Sterling, MA,(reputed to be the one immortalized in Sarah Josepha Hale's poem "Mary Had a Little Lamb") onto the grounds a few years later.

Reading at Inkwood Books in Tampa, Florida. What a terrific bookstore!

My book Dancing with My Daughter is dedicated to my mother--a fiesty, fearless woman who loved music, friends, family, and being productive! Tragically, the last ten years of her life were spent in the grip of Alzheimer's disease; even then, her sense of humor managed to shine through!