The first story I ever wrote was about a girl who liked to spend time in the woods. That was pretty much the whole plot. I was nine. I’ve improved! No, really!

Since that first story, I’ve written many others, some of the good enough to be published in wee lit magazines, some of them good enough to get me into the M.F.A. program at Vermont College (where I wrote enough other good ones to graduate in 2002), and some of them good enough to launch a freelance writing career. Actually, my fiction had nothing to do with that. Those years were all about pretending to be confident.

Now I work as an associate editor at Nomad Press, where I get to read and write all day long. Then I come home to my husband and three sons for rowdy dinners. It’s a good life.