"Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart."
~William Wordsworth
I grew up playing in the fields and streams of Pennsylvania. In my twenties, I relocated to southern Vermont where I taught school, kept chickens, and stayed put to raise two spirited daughters on a dirt road in a forested town, the Whetstone Brook running through it. Now I live among oak and spruce on the rocky coast of Maine.
Place matters to me–––backroads and marshes, salt rivers and harbors, and the sea. As a writer, I'm curious about how the interior lives of people play out against the backdrop of a moody landscape in rural communities.
My linked-story story collection, They Could Live With Themselves (Press 53) is set in the fictional town of Stark Run. Like most of what I write, these stories are about loss and desire, farming and art, aging and death They're about curiosoty and trouble, murky boundaries and unexpected alliances. I write what I know and what I'm trying to figure out. Here's a link to my publications.
In 2008, I transitioned out of a career working with children and teachers-in-training so I could write, make art, and spend more time outside. I built a tiny house in the woods, a peaceful place, and thought about what was next. I earned an MFA and became a writing teacher and certified creativity coach. I now freelance as an editor and coach, and facilitate workshops and retreats in pretty places.
More about that...
They Could Live With Themselves, published by Press 53, was runner-up in the 2015 Press 53 Prize for Short Fiction, an IPPY Silver Medalist, and a finalist in the 2017 Maine Book Award.
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"Jodi has a natural ease in her storytelling and an unsentimental yet compassionate depth of understanding of human foibles and desires.”
~Frank Smith, Portland Herald Press
