"Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart."
~William Wordsworth
I grew up playing in the fields and streams of Pennsylvania. As a young adult, I relocated to southern Vermont. I taught school, kept chickens, and raised 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 harbor villages, and of course, the sea. As a writer, I'm curious about how the interior lives of people play out against the backdrop of a moody, weather-rich 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. They're stories about love and loss, farming and art, aging and death. They're about questions 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
