Four years ago, I went to the Westport Health Department on Bayberry Road to get a Tine Test. I was happy, of course, to learn I didn’t have TB, but also because it now allowed me to begin volunteering at Bedford Hills Women’s Correctional Facility. More recently I’ve begun visiting York Correctional Facility in Connecticut,…
My childhood was filled with bikes rides to my town library in the summer, loading up on books, stuffing them into my backpack, and bringing them home to read, usually with a big bowl of ice cream propped up on my knees. During the school year, free time in the library meant choosing books to…
Anyone who knows even a little about the publishing business would understand that there could be no way, when conceiving of a new book project, to predict when it will see the light of day. So it wasn’t until my manuscript Nine, Ten was nearing publication that I realized that this year is actually the…
In 2001, after the publication of What Every Girl (except me) Knows, I returned to New Paltz Middle School to speak to the sixth-grade students. I was, after all, a sort of hometown success story, right? My first stop was the library upstairs. I wanted to share with the librarian how important books had been…