This is builder Charles Wood who built the Nantucket Atheneum in 1846 and 1847.  Not to be irreverant, but hubba […]

When I moved to Nantucket in 1984, I looked different from the way I look now (yes, shoulder pads) and

I was so pleased when Sofia Dakos said on my recent post about writing that she likes my little blue

I love winter, truly–it’s a great time to write.  But I miss color.  So when my husband went to Bermuda

December is my favorite month of the year. Christmas with all its excitement arrives, along with friends and family. The

  We can never forget we live on an island. On Nantucket, we’re thirty miles from the continent. We’re surrounded

As we head into the holiday season, I think that some of the more. . .mature. . . of my

Autumn is a calm season on the island. The light slants differently on the houses and the harbor. Now we

             While writing this blog, I’ve discovered I’m obsessed with houses. Island Girls is about three sisters who will inherit

Multi-talented Sara Prentice Manela made this wonderful map for me years ago, to show where special places in my book

I wonder how many public high schools have the skeleton of a whale hanging in the main hallway. Nantucket High

It’s true, what Mitchell’s window says. Life is a wonderful fairy tale. Not all the time, maybe, but sometimes, and

The Island House is about two young women with secrets that will change their lives during one summer on Nantucket.

What inspires my writing? Sometimes, my memory–and my diary, which I kept from the time I was 17. I dated

I had a really good idea for a novel. What if a lovely divorced woman with a little girl marries

  In Between Husbands and Friends, I explored the secrets we tell our husbands, our friends, and ourselves. Nantucket summers,

I think it takes a while for anyone who moves to a strange new town to feel as if they

“Could she just accept her child? Or should she, must she, remain on guard, forever nudging and nagging her daughter

           Everlasting flowers are those that keep their color and shape for, well, a very long time, if properly dried.

(The ereader cover)            In this novel,  Daphne Miller is trying to rebuild her life after she was divorced from

  A writer, Fanny Anderson, says those words on page 252 of my novel Morning. At the beginning of the

Sometimes the separation between fiction and autobiography is as thin as gossamer. In 1983, after I met Charley Walters, I

In 1978, Tillie Olsen published a non-fiction book called Silences, where she shares a survey proving that then—in 1978—one of

I’ve always said that I wanted to write books about real women’s lives. I’ve wanted to include the dirty dishes

By the time my first novel, Stepping, was published, I had already written most of my second novel. As I

It was a glorious occasion when my first novel, Stepping, was published by Doubleday in January, 1980!  If you want

YOUR LIFE IS NOT A NOVEL OR MAYBE IT IS! I’ve always wanted to write about the lives of “ordinary”

When I looked at the photo of our library–republished here because I accidentally deleted it–I saw 2 books by and