Julia
I grew up between the Michigan small towns of Marne and Coopersville, surrounded by hog farms and apple orchards, a rural area between Grand Rapids and Lake Michigan’s beaches.
Living between places offers views beyond one’s backyard. A complex network of family, friends, and faith experiences populates my personal landscape and informs my nonfiction and fiction writing.
The Midwest has been home most of my life. It’s the place my husband and I raised our son and daughter, and we continue to live in the Grand Rapids area. I enjoy traveling to many areas of the United States and beyond. Still, I am a Midwesterner at heart and prefer the wooded tranquility of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula within the Ottawa National Forest, where we visit our cottage on a lake.
After many years working as a speech-language therapist in a variety of settings, I stepped away to devote more time to my family and started writing in 2010. Over time, I took writing classes and workshops and became part of a writer tribe who share my passion for writing. I published short stories and essays and wrote a memoir and a novel.
Then, the unexpected happened. An expressway accident that nearly ended my life, followed by months of recovery. Finding my way back to the page hasn’t been easy. Writing was always an interesting challenge, and now, after suffering a TBI, this is more true than ever. Moving forward, my recovery journey includes writing, spending time with family and friends, attending the occasional writer conference or workshop, and traveling with my husband and dog.
It was a canary flying unfettered. The bird swooped from one side of the room to the other and voiced no song, its wings swatting the walls blindly. A breeze had caught hold of a lace curtain, the bottom of the fabric fluttered outside.
Ger looked up at the sky, hands clasped and resting in her lap, and I thought she might be done but she wasn’t.
And in all the time I stood there, the trapped canary was unable to locate an exit and never escaped.
"Echoed" from Dunes Review
“In that new car, I imagined the windows rolled down and the low rumble of the engine with Brenda by Dick’s side, and an endless future, possibilities limited only as far as their dreams traveled.”
- “Tour of Duty” from The Bay View Literary Magazine