I come from a time when Southern California was beautiful, and I have the stamp of that setting and time—the Fifties—on my soul. I read Nancy Drew, absorbed every movie my parents would allow me to see, and believed in a happy future. At a small California college, Pomona, I earned a B.A. and later an M.A. in literature. I married my college sweetheart and began to teach English in our high school. I’d planned my life like many in the Fifties: to teach for a few years and then stay at home and have babies and raise them to be exceptional people.

Trouble began by the late Sixties—an era of much upheaval reflected in my life. First, I was found to be infertile, and then my husband turned out to be gay. (Plenty to write about there!) I divorced and returned to teaching. I then had two adopted children to raise alone. Those shocks give impetus to my writing, though I was afraid to touch on the personal in my work at that time.

In the Seventies, I gave up teaching to study religion in Berkeley, chasing the hope that I could figure out what brings people to spirituality and the church. After three years—much to my surprise—I became an ordained Congregational minister. By the Eighties, I had published articles in two religious publications and began the search for meaning that plays out in my writing.

By the Nineties I ventured away from California into Arizona where I took the appointment as minister of a small church. The break from the familiar coastline and weather of California was a watershed experience for me, and my adventures at that church are recounted in my memoir, Mrs. Ogg Played the Harp: My Year with God’s People in Arizona. I now pursue publishers for the project in hopes that it will find an audience before I die.

Today I’m retired from ministry and give time to the essay. I’ve won some writing awards, and my publications include literary journals, magazines, and anthologies. After the death of my second husband, a major character in the memoir, I remarried and continue in retirement to speak and write in Arizona.

“Find your theme—illness, abuse, bigotry, poverty, love, separation, justice—and weave it like a master craftsman. It can meander through your book like a winding, beckoning trail or be as painful as an open gushing wound, but don’t lose it in the trappings of the tale.” From an article on writing memoir, author unknown.