Writing is my second act. I’ve occasionally questioned if it should have been my first act, but spending 30 plus years teaching youngsters to play string instruments wasn’t a bad gig.

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I fell in love with words at a young age. My parents read to me almost every night, everything from Uncle Wiggly to Edward Lear limericks. As a child, I loved walking into the local library and inhaling that clean fresh wood-and-paper smell as I chose my two books for the week. In second grade, I couldn’t wait to get to school to hear our teacher read another chapter of The Secret Garden. Later, I devoured classics, historical novels, and the fiction of John Updike and edited my high school newspaper. To this day,  I still find great pleasure curled up in a chair reading a good story, now on an electronic device.

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The love of words on the printed page turned into a love of writing. I was torn between majoring in music education and English in college. Music won out, but I never gave up on that passion for words lurking in the back of my brain.

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Second Act Stories was born in 2017 as a place for me to practice putting words together. To use a musical analogy, my blog is like working on scales and etudes to prepare for the concertos and solos of longer, polished essays. I love finding a story in simple things—in something ordinary that conveys a powerful message, or evokes memories. For me, writing is a portal to understanding.

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I write what’s known as creative nonfiction—true stories told using techniques typically found in fiction. I’ve taken online classes and worked with several great mentors and coaches and still consider myself very much a student of writing. My longer essays have been published in a number of online literary journals including Hippocampus, Thread, Chicago Story Press, The Delmarva Review, AARP’s The Girlfriend, Episcopal Café, and HerStry. I have won several awards in Penn Writers Annual Writing Contest, had a piece chosen for The Best of Delmarva Review 2008-2023 anthology  and was utterly humbled to have had my work nominated for inclusion in Best American Essays as well as a Pushcart Prize.

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The rest of my retirement life centers around my husband and home, our dog family of two West Highland White terriers, singing  with the Susquehanna Chorale, (look us up on YouTube), and enjoying and maintaining our waterfront vacation home. I am a cradle Episcopalian and devoted church choir member and found it very meaningful that the first piece I ever published was in an online journal called Episcopal Café.

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Thank you for visiting www.secondactstories.com.