Bio
A Little More About Ann
I grew up in a village in the heartland of Ohio–a leafy and innocent place to come of age–the oldest of five children.
I think my writing life began before I could write or read. We lived in the country then. My siblings were starting to arrive, but they weren’t old enough to play with me. So I found an imaginary friend, Steedie O-by. Every morning Steedie’s dad drove up in his rusted, mint-green Ford on the way to work and dropped Steedie off. My mother said I made Steedie so real she felt maybe she should set an extra place at the table. As a little girl, my emotional need came together with a spark of creativity and conjured a solution to the problem of nobody-to-play-with.
My writing is like that. In some inward place, I have a lantern-lit storeroom that holds a love of words, some creativity and intuition, and a willingness to go deep and bring back truth as close to the bone as I can tell it. Through the fog, fire, mud and miracles of my life, writing has been my unfailing companion. It is in writing about an experience–trying to make sense of it, searching for the exact words, the exact image, the exact feeling, the distilled and potent essence of it–I come to know what I know. And perhaps my readers know something for themselves, too.
My husband and I have lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for more than 50 years and are still amazed by its stunning beauty, open-heartedness and open-mindedness. He and the life we have together here have helped make me who I am. I am a studier of dreams, a maker of poems, a reader, a listener, a watcher, a traveler on the spiritual journey that is life, an Interfaith Minister of the Arts who writes.
