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Midwest Journalist Nancy Fowler Awarded Writer in Residence at Women’s Writing House

Nancy Fowler, a veteran Midwest journalist from Missouri, is the 2021 Writer in Residence at the Daisy Pettles House for Women Writers. Selected from among applicants from 23 states and several foreign countries, Fowler will receive a $1000 grant and become the 2021 writer in residence at the Daisy Pettles’ House for Women Authors in Bedford, Indiana.

Fowler’s 30-day residency, slated for this spring, will allow her time and cash support to develop her winning work-in-progress, “I Would Have Loved You So Much,” a memoir about her personal journey as she ages without grandchildren—a cultural trend that is affecting life and aging for a growing a number of American women.

Fowler, now 65, previously received a news writing regional Emmy Award for her work with WXYZ-TV in Detroit and a Pride St. Louis’ Felton T. Day Award for her ongoing service to St. Louis’ LGBT community. “Gay Home Movie” feature coverage she created for St. Louis Public Radio which earned her an Edward R. Murrow award.

Her writing passions encompass the arts, culture, and social justice. Her lifelong body of work has spanned public radio, TV, and online media as well as print.

Nancy Fowler, 2021 Writer in Residence at Daisy Pettles House for Older Women Writers

Q: Your winning entry, “I Would Have Loved You So Much,” a memoir in progress, chronicles your experience of aging without grandchildren. Is memoir a new arena for you, and why did you choose this topic as the focus of your own life story?

When I was 7 or 8, my much older brother, an undergraduate psychology student, told me if I were ever bored, I should write the story of my life. After I became an adult, certain chapters in my life seemed to emerge as memoir-worthy. In my late ‘30s, married to a man and raising three young children, I fell in love with my best female friend. My then-husband used the laws of Missouri to try and cut me off from my children, including one with special needs. For many years, I thought of that as “my story” and wrote many a memoir draft along those lines.

Now that I’m 65, my story has expanded. About a year ago, after confirming that none of my children wants to have children, I began grieving it like a loss. I also began to consider that perhaps loss and grief have always been part of my story, that they are part of everyone’s story. And the specific loss I feel now—not having grandchildren—is something I share with thousands of other older mothers. Having no grandchildren when you always thought you would echoes through the baby boomer generation, a consequence of a declining birth rate. It’s also a coalescing factor around which to wrap my entire life, including the irony that I fought so hard for custody of children who don’t want their own. My children know I respect their decisions and that I don’t hold them responsible for my feelings.

Nancy and her family during these Zoom days

Q: You career began in the late Seventies in TV journalism. Unlike many of our applicants you maintained a lifelong interest in media as a career. But you did break your career to raise a family of three children. What advice do you have for women who may want a career in media but see it as a dying career with pay too low to support a family?

There’s all of media and then there’s the subcategory of journalism. I can only talk about journalism and even then most of my experience is of the back-in-the-day variety.

This may sound pessimistic, but if a young woman is interested in journalism, I might tell her to work in another, more lucrative field and become a citizen-journalist on social media on the weekends! Invest in your company’s savings plan, take the full match of the company’s contribution, save up in to fund your maternity leave if you want children. So few people, men and women, can actually make a living in journalism. It’s certainly not something they can count on to sustain them. Although, who knows? You might be an outlier and journalism will pay your bills. But have a backup plan.

Q: Much of your work has dealt with issues of social justice within the gay and lesbian community. One of your more notable projects, which won a Murrow award, was coverage of a documentary project that involves the reclamation of home movie reels that record a gay pool party at a private St. Louis home during WWII. What role do you think journalism plays today in recording the history of disenfranchised or marginalized populations within our culture? Has social media and reality TV and radio-to-podcasting swings doomed the diversification of American voices in media?

Look at the speed at which George Floyd’s murder traveled and how quickly it moved people to action this past summer. Social media was instrumental in prompting thousands to sustain a weeks-long protest against brutality against Black people.

I think the proliferation of social media has actually brought to the fore the voices of more people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals. It’s one side of the coin of that changing face of journalism. Anyone can be a journalist now, a documenter of our times. That growing contingent means no one’s paying as much for news now but it also makes it harder for the power structure to silence diverse voices.

They say journalism is the first draft of history. Today, a robust history of many marginalized people is being recorded in more ways than ever before.

Midwest Author Nancy Fowler and her wife, Cindy, on a hike

Q: You recently made the switch from full-time writing and producing on a salary to freelance gigs. Many writers find freelance writing and the gig economy greatly reduces their income while also taking away vital benefits—health insurance, pensions, etc. Any advice for women who choose freelance writing or media careers today and who also want to keep strong family ties?

Keep your expenses low is the best advice I can give. Do you really need a third bedroom which means a bigger, more expensive house? Or would you rather put away money for emergencies since you’re not making enough to do both? It’s a shame we don’t pay our journalists and artists enough to enjoy security. 

Q: You’re a lifelong journalist—some might say the last of a dying breed in an industry that now embraces sensationalist reality media over hard-nosed reporting. What are the challenges facing journalism today, and is “news” a dying trend vs. “opinion” journalism?

I’m certainly no expert on this. But I think the biggest challenge facing journalists today is people have spent the last four years hearing that journalists aren’t reputable and news is fake. So I’m not actually sure I am part of a dying breed. Maybe more of a starving breed. There are so many ethical journalists working (or who would like to work) and so many reputable news outlets—radio, newspapers, digital—struggling to stay in business. But there’s no money in it.

Since maybe the early 2000s, reputable news outlets have struggled to sell what they used to give away for free in the early days of the internet. They were slow to get on the monetizing wagon, and outlets that existed to make money and push agendas began to proliferate. There’s so much information coming at us and we now want news that confirms our existing bias.

Q: Are favorite pieces of your own writing accessible online, and if so can you share their online links with our readers? Why do you like these pieces or what do they represent in your own evolution as a writer and a woman?

I’m still pretty early in my creative nonfiction journey and have actually just begun working on an MFA in Writing. So other than my “The Barbie Scale” essay which WOW (Women on Writing) so generously published, and one very short piece coming out in the Readers Write section of Sun literary magazine this spring, my published pieces are in the genre of journalism.

One of my favorite radio stories is about the value of music in hospice care. I connected with two families whose dying loved ones’ heartbeats became part of a personalized song they can listen to and treasure forever. The story is best told in the radio version (To hear the story, click the “Listen” arrow at the top left of the linked paged)

I am also proud of my coverage of a high-achieving college student on full scholarship named Ngone Seck, whose path once seemed assured. Then years of untreated dental decay began to threaten her success. After hearing my story, someone came forward to provide her dental care and the student is now a thriving engineering major. I’m so happy to have helped make a difference in her life, knowing she will go on to make a difference in the lives of others.

Missouri Journalism Contest Winner nancy Fowler
Missouri Broadcast journalist Nancy Fowler “on the air”

I also feel that both stories illustrate the work I put into learning a brand-new medium—radio—in my late 50s. In my television news days, I worked behind the scenes so becoming an on-air reporter who also worked solo to capture all outside audio and then produce each story was a huge challenge! Now that I’ve turned my focus more directly toward writing creative nonfiction, I am equally excited to have begun pursuing an MFA at the age of 65.

The Daisy Pettles House for Women Writers, sponsored by Cozy Mystery Writer and Indiana Author Daisy Pettles, is a project dedicated to encouraging older women writers, aged 40+ through cash grants and month-long writing residencies in a vintage bungalow in southern Indiana. Women writers may compete for a writer-in-residence spot or support the project through renting the house for their own month-long or week-long residencies or retreats. Donations are also accepted through Go Fund Me for those wishing to support older women writers.

Eight Finalists in Writing Contest for Women 2021

The Daisy Pettles’ Writing Competition for mature Women Writers (aged 40+) https://www.daisypettleswritingcontest.com has announced 8 finalists for the 2021 Women’s Writing House Residency and cash grant awards.

Applicants were surprisingly accomplished. Many had been writing for decades and had achieved accolades as notable as the Emmy and Murrow Awards, and Amazon best-seller commercial fiction status, but just as many had recently retired from lifelong careers unrelated to writing to begin work on long delayed passion projects.

2021 applicants included a mix of published and unpublished women writers working in genres ranging across humor, film, fantasy, romance, creative non-fiction, literary novels, non-fiction history and culture, memoirs, journalism, and commercial thrillers. The Daisy Pettles’ grant program, open to women writers regardless of citizenship, attracted applicants from nineteen states as well as residents of Italy, Scotland, UK, India, Pakistan, and Ireland.

Finalists 2021 Grant Cycle – Daisy Pettles House

Melanie Cox – Yakima, Washington

Drafting “Writing Dottie,” where an odd collection of people, including an aging nursing home resident with growing dementia, and a young grief-stricken schoolteacher, bond together to thwart a modern-day “Austenian” romance plot, granting each other’s previously hollow lives new purpose and meaning in the process

Nancy Fowler – St. Louis, Missouri

A lifelong reporter, working on a journalist memoir about not being a grandmother, entitled, “I Would Have Loved Her So Much”; literary journalism that pegs a sharply declining national birth rate to a poignant personal story of the meaning, value and burdens of mothering and parenting across generations in America

Laura Federico – Bloomfield, New Jersey

Working on a supernatural thriller/mystery novel, “And the Heart Gives Up Its Dead,” which chronicles the struggles of a disenfranchised woman who utilizes her unique psychic gifts to invoke a better life

Katherine Mezzacappa – Italy

An historical fiction writer originally from the UK, residing in Italy, at work on a commercial novel … “Annie of Ainsworth Mill,” the imaginary tale of a young flax dresser from Ireland navigating the social pressures of her time to establish love and livelihood

Gwendolyn Mintz – Las Cruces, New Mexico

Working on a debut Literary Novel, “Something Like Happiness,” which chronicles the story of a young woman set against the juvenile justice system and involuntary state sterilization

Dorothy Porco – Madison, Wisconsin

“Birdie’s Lament,” a debut novel that chronicles loss in two women’s intersecting lives; a generational spanning of how lessons from our ancestors (1800s to modern day) can inspire and guide

Elizabeth Ramsay –  Boca Raton, Florida

Working on an ethnic ghost story collection, “Drinking the Chocolate,” modern renditions of ghost and horror stories from the folklores of Japan, Native American tribes, Jamaica, Spain, Ireland, and China, featuring young protagonists

Laurie Wax – Washington, DC

Working on a family drama novel, “Christmas in Mycenae,” that details the ideological struggles of a conservative father in Iowa as he attempts to understand his socially progressive adult children and their journeys

The majority of entrants for the 2021 awards had yet to be published by traditional presses, yet submitted works in progress that outshined some of their prize-winning peers. More than half of the entrants were employed in or retired from primary careers, including: administrative assistant, lawyer, social worker, therapist, teacher, librarian, nurse, journalist, tutor, software engineer, project manager, academic chair, professor, public relations director, medical tech, entrepreneur, and editor.

The final 3 prize winners—3 cash prizes are available along with the grand prize of a free, self-guided 1-month house residency—will be notified via email by January 21, with a follow-up blog post.

Women Writers: If you are in need of a quiet retreat for creative projects, a self-designed residency, or writing group get-togethers, the fully-furnished Daisy Pettles’ House for Women Writers is available for group or individual rental on a monthly basis at a reduced rate. Query Cindy on availability and occupancy rates for 2021.

LISTEN and Laugh along, to the FREE Daisy Pettles comedy podcast, the complete audiobook, “Ghost Busting Mystery,” Book 1 in the award-winning, humorous, cozy mystery series, The Shady Hoosier Detective Agency. > https://daisypettles.com/cozy-mystery-podcast/

DONATE to the Women’s Writing House > https://www.gofundme.com/f/daisy-pettles-women-writers-house

South Carolina Writer Sharon May Awarded Writer in Residence at Daisy Pettles House

Sharon May, from Columbia, South Carolina, a retired college instructor, is the July 2020 Writer in Residence at the Daisy Pettles House for Women Writers. Sharon, now 63, also recently won second place in South Carolina’s Carrie McCray Memorial Award in both the novel and non-fiction categories for her works in progress, a novel “Redeeming Hills,” and a hillbilly memoir. She and her wife, Peggy Thompson, are the proud parents of five rescue cats.

Sharon May, July 2020 Writer in Residence
Sharon May, July 2020 Writer in Residence at Daisy Pettles House for Older Women Writers

Q: Your award-winning entry, “Hillbilly Crazy and Mountain Queer,” chapter one of a memoir in progress, was your first non-fiction piece. Did you always want to write non-fiction or is this a new arena for your writing?

I wrote so many literary analyses in my academic career and later published a composition textbook with four other authors that I thought I would never write non-fiction again.

I limited myself to fiction during the many starts and restarts in my writing life. In the early 2000s, I needed to do some writing for therapy, and over a week or two, drafted 20 pages of what I called, “Hillbilly Crazy and Mountain Queer,” which I didn’t touch again until 2016 when I stopped teaching summers.  

Q: You recently retired from teaching composition at Midlands Technical College. You also co-authored a textbook on reading and composition, did you find teaching composition a good way to develop and sharpen your own writing skills? What did you like and/or loathe about that job?        

Before I started teaching composition, I had a fly-by-the-seat-my-pants writing process: start writing the paper a day or two before the project was due. There was never enough time for deep revision, so the first draft served as the final. Luckily, my talent served me well.

Once I started asking other people to try to do that, I learned I had to hold myself to the same standard. Longer works cannot be written well in one sitting. Teaching led me to give up that fantasy and begin working on a schedule and devoting more time to revision than drafting. 

I loved the interaction with students, and I taught every kind from those who could barely put a sentence together on paper to those sophomores studying American literature. I didn’t mind reading students’ writing and giving advice for improvement, but I hated the actual grading and the reliance on grades to evaluate writing.

Sharon May, Bilbury-Cotswolds, England
July 2020 Residency Winner Sharon May in Bilbury-Cotswolds, England

Q: Many writers take day jobs while developing their talent. You’re retired now, but what jobs, other than teaching, have you tackled in your quest to become a writer? Did any of them help you become a better writer?

As an undergrad in the 1970s, I worked as a reporter and photographer for a small county newspaper in Kentucky. I picked up a lot of story ideas in that job. Actually, I have developed a list of characters and plots from all the jobs I worked since I was 15: cashier, waitress, computer operator, accountant, Director of Purchasing at a small hospital, manager of a pizza joint.

What really helped me become a better writer was joining a writer’s workshop about three years ago. The deadlines of meetings help keep me on track, and the feedback from the other workshop members has been invaluable. 

Q: Your works are set in the Kentucky hills of your childhood. Do you think Appalachia is well represented in non-fiction, fiction, or in modern media? What do people get right about that region? What do they get wrong? How does your fiction represent the region?

The Kentucky hills are not very well depicted in any media. Stereotypes abound, some of which are so clownish and absurd that we hillbillies will act like the stereotype and then make fun of the foreigners (anyone not from the hills) for being so gullible and stupid.

There is quite of bit of attention being given to Appalachian writers now. While most writers love the people of the region, they have difficulty depicting them as more than stereotypes.  “Hillbilly Elegy” fed into the stereotype of a rough-and-tumble people who drink (now, do drugs) and fight too much, and are uneducated to boot. I haven’t finished “Hill Women,” but I’m afraid it is too romanticized.  Few works try to show the complexity of the people from Kentucky.

I hope my works will be different. Yes, there is an undercurrent of violence in the hills, but the reasons for that are rarely explored to any depth. Yes, there are those who lack traditional schooling, but hillbillies can be more intelligent than many people with PhDs. Everyone from the hills has different experiences depending on class, race, ethnic background, education, and so on.

Q: What are you working on this summer and how is that project coming along?

I am primarily working on revising the novel, which I am now calling “Nothing Remains Hidden.” I expect to finish that project by early spring, if the Lord’s willing and the creek don’t rise.

I have also drafted a chapter for “Hillbilly Crazy and Mountain Queer,” along with a few attempts at writing poetry.

Q: You and your wife have a great clowder of cats. Tell us how that came to be. Do they assist you as literary muses or distract you from your efforts?

When we got together 16 years ago, Peggy had two Siamese cats, and I had two alley cats. Three of them have since passed away. Baylee, a gray and white Snowshoe Siamese is now 18. She was either dumped or ran away to a feral cat colony at Burger King in West Columbia.

Rocky, a black and brown tabby, is about 12. He showed up on Christmas Day 10 years ago and a neighbor gave him fillet mignon. He stayed, but was not streetwise, so we brought him in. He stayed mostly under the bed for at least four months.

Calvin and Hobbes are 3- year-old Flame Point Siamese litter mates from Florida. I saw them on the Siamese Rescue Organization website. They were transported to GA, where I picked them up.

Link, a three-year-old, orange and white long-haired cat was rescued by Cats Around Town. I saw him at a local pet store adoption event and fell in love. Peggy won’t let me go to other events.

Cats have always been my muse. My first word was “cat,” according to my mother. They usually can be found sleeping near me in my office. I admit they can interfere when they want attention or food.

Q: You’re 63. Any advice for older women who may have delayed their writing careers while pursuing day jobs, raising children or families, or facing other of life’s many challenges?

The best advice I can give is carpe diem. Make time to write, set up a schedule that works for you, no matter how bizarre, and write as much as you can in one sitting. It’s okay to start small at 30 minutes a session. Build up steam until you write regularly and productively. Don’t forget that thinking about your how to write and reading about writing are also writing. I find I may spend an hour just thinking about an aspect of the work, and then write for a while on those thoughts.

Don’t let perfectionism and the editing bug hold you back. Put words on paper. Almost any writer will tell you that the first draft if pretty bad. Most of your time will be revising. Feel free to make mistakes in drafting. 

Take advantage of your age and wisdom. You have lots of experiences to write about.

Sharon on an Alaskan Lake
South Carolina Author and Writer in Residence, Sharon May, paddling through Alaska

Q: Do you have favorite pieces of your own writing accessible online that you’d like to share with our readers? If so, why do you like these pieces or what do they represent in your own evolution as a writer and person?  Where can our readers find or follow you online?

Unfortunately, I do not have anything published online.  I do plan to learn how to do that.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Sharon May’s works-in-progress can be viewed at the following collective sites as of July, 2020: “Redeeming Hills, (fiction), Petigru Review; and “Hillbilly Queer and Mountain Crazy,” Petigru Review (creative non-fiction, memoir). Her selected essays on the writing life are viewable on the Columbia Writers’ Workshop website.

The Daisy Pettles House for Women Writers is a project dedicated to locating and encouraging older women writers, aged 40+ through cash grants and month-long residencies in a vintage bungalow in southern Indiana. Women writers may compete for a writer-in-residence spot or support the project through renting the house for their own month-long or week-long residencies or retreats. Donations are also accepted through Go Fund Me for those wishing to support older women writers.

Daisy Pettles Women Writers Prize Winners – July 2020 Grants

Daisy Pettles, Indiana author and philanthropist, is pleased to announce the winners in the July 2020 residency and grant awards in the Daisy Pettles Contest for Women Writers.

The prize competition, with a top award of $1,000 and a free, month-long residency in the Daisy Pettles Houses for Women Writers, a vintage bungalow located in Southern Indiana,  is open annually to older women writers, aged forty or over, published or unpublished, working in any genre (other than poetry).

Prize Winners – Older Women Writers

Grand Prize & Writer in Residence – Sharon May – Columbia, South Carolina

Working on a southern Appalachian memoir and novel, “Hillbilly Crazy and Mountain Queer”

1st Runner-Up – Karen Ahn – Sebastopol, California

Working on a Novel, “The  Music Lesson,” where a 16 year-old musician struggles with her talent only to be haunted in her 30’s by misconceptions and doubts about past life choices.

2nd Runner-Up – Shari Benyousky –  Warsaw,  Indiana

Working on a Mystery Novel, “Then Shall the Dust Return,” a literary and historical mystery and ghost story based on a 1920s unsolved crime in Atwood, Indiana

July 2020 applicants included both published and unpublished women writers working in genres ranging across children’s musical plays, fantasy novels, literary novels, radio plays, creative non-fiction memoirs, and commercial mysteries. The writer’s grant program , open to women regardless of citizenship or residency status, attracted applicants from sixteen states in the United States as well as Sweden, Scotland, and South Africa.

A notable number of entries were submitted from older women writers and retirees in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. The Daisy Pettles Writer’s House and awards program is located in Bedford, Indiana, close to Indiana University, Bloomington.

In addition, the following writers, all finalists in the competition, were awarded honorable mention for excellence in writing.

Women Writers Prize Finalists – July 2020 Grant Cycle

Christina Cha – Oakland, California
Working on a collection of essays, Creative Non-Fiction, “Chaste While You Wait,” detailing family relationships and the use of memory and language to deal with grief over trauma and abuse

Brit Monica Maria Gustafsson – Sweden
Working on an English update and translation of a Swedish spy thriller novel, “The Asset”

Devin Kenney – Morristown, New Jersey
Drafting “All the Kings Horses,” a collection of non-fiction essays on addiction, mental health recovery, and single-parent mothering

Amy Lyons – New York, New York
Short story and flash fiction writer. Working on a short story collection, “Marginalia and Other Stories” with a central theme of women’s desires and regrets

Juliet Lockwood  – Grants Pass, Oregon
Working on a Speculative Fiction Novel, “The Coven,” which tells the interconnected stories of 12 benevolent witches in a Pacific Northwest coven by blending the horror, science fiction, supernatural, and dystopian genres

The majority of entrants for the July awards had yet to be published by traditional presses, yet submitted works in progress that bettered many of their top prize-winning peers. More than half of the entrants were retired from careers as diverse as factory worker, marketer, painter, retail clerk, lawyer, social worker, teacher, choreographer, lobbyist, librarian, journalist, medical researcher, English professor, business manager, and copy editor.

Grand Prize: $1,000 Cash Prize, PLUS Free 30-day  Residency as Writer in Residence at the Daisy Pettles House in Bedford, Indiana, a vintage 1920s bungalow, equipped with all the amenities a women writer needs to write her heart out, undisturbed, for a month.

1st Runner-Up: $250 Cash Grant; PLUS Award Certificate as Finalist

2nd Runner-Up: $100 Cash Grant; PLUS Award Certificate as Finalist

Grants were awarded based on writing talent, along with consideration of which particular writers might benefit most from the awards given the details they chose to share with the judges in their application profiles.

The Daisy Pettles Women’s Writing Competition is sponsored by Hoosier humor and mystery writer Daisy Pettles (Vicky Phillips), in honor of her mother, June, an avid reader. June passed away in the spring of 2019, leaving her home in the care of her daughter.  Daisy is working with a team women writers and Indiana historical preservationists to convert the home, a vintage 1920s bungalow located in southern Indiana (Lawrence County, south of Monroe County, Bloomington), to an ongoing retreat for older women writers.

Women Writers House

The goal of the Women’s Writing House project is to discover, nurture, and reward diversity in writing and the arts by showcasing older women’s voices in literature. The project can be supported through Go Fund Me.

WRITER’S HOUSE RENTAL > When not occupied by a writer in residence, the Daisy Pettles House is open to monthly rental by any woman seeking a personal and private writing, artistic, spiritual, or meditative retreat, as well as women in groups of up to three for girlfriend retreats. For more on the house’s rental, rates, and availability, contact Cindy Yager, Co-ordinator.

DONATE to the Women’s Writing House on Go Fund Me >

Daisy Pettles Writers House - Front Small
Rent the Daisy Pettles House Retreat for Women

LISTEN and Laugh along FREE, to the Daisy Pettles’ comedy podcast, the complete audio book, “Ghost Busting Mystery,” Book 1 in the award-winning Shady Hoosier Detective Agency series.

Kentucky Writer Teri Carter Awarded Writer in Residence at Daisy Pettles House

Teri Carter, who resides in rural Kentucky, between Lexington and Louisville, is the June 2020 Writer in Residence at the Daisy Pettles House for Women Writers.

In this piece, Teri, who came to writing late in life, not publishing her first story until the age of 38, then unexpectedly becoming a journalist and political columnist at the age of 51, serves as a reminder that it’s never too late to take up the quill and begin to record life as you see it. The Daisy Pettles House, an Indiana writing retreat dedicated to recognizing and rewarding older women writers of exceptional talent, is honored to sponsor Teri, and her rescue dog, Hazel Belle, as they create new stories as our June Writer in Residence, 2020.

Teri Carter, June 2020 Writer-In-Residence at Daisy Pettles House

Q: You write political opinion in Kentucky, and you’ve published some pieces nationally at sites such as the Washington Post. What challenges have you faced as a woman columnist chronicling history in the current divisive political climate?

I never dreamed I’d write about politics, and I certainly never imagined I would publish my personal, very liberal, feminist opinions weekly in a conservative state like Kentucky. To say mine is a minority view – my county voted 72% for Donald Trump, and Sen. Mitch McConnell has been in office here for 35 years – is laughable. And yet being a controversial columnist, especially in such a polarized and terrifying time, has made me an infinitely better writer, a much braver writer, and opened so many other doors. Central Kentucky has a very active and supportive literary community, and local writers of all genres have generously welcomed me into the fold.

We (my retired husband and I) moved here from northern California in 2016 and, other than our 20-something son who had gone to college at UK and stayed, I knew no one. Add that we live way out in the country, halfway between Lexington and Louisville, and it felt a bit like I’d ceased to exist. Then the Access Hollywood tape came out.

I was so enraged that week. It was incomprehensible to me that a presidential candidate could get away with saying he could grab women by the p**** or kiss them whenever he felt like it and suffer little to no electoral consequences. So I sat down at my dining room table, wrote an OpEd in less than 2 hours, looked up the newspaper editor’s email online, and pressed send. “The Tic Tac Man,” which chronicled my own experience working with and for abusive men like Donald Trump, men who routinely get away with sexual harassment and assault, was in the paper the next day.

That piece led to another and then another, and the next thing I knew I had a regular column. I’m a freelancer, so I was never guaranteed newspaper space (I’m still not) which means I have to earn my way into print with every essay, every OpEd. I credit this constant challenge – to write something original, personal, timely, and likely divisive, and then to edit my own pieces to make as little work as possible for the newspaper’s editors – with instilling the discipline I use in all of my work now.

Do I get hate mail and vile comments? Sure. All journalists and columnists do these days. We’re the “enemy of the people” right? (insert eye roll here) But I believe it is worse for women. I’ve been threatened with violence. I’ve been accosted in public too many times to count. Older gentlemen often ask my husband if he “helps me” write my columns. A well-meaning neighbor used to suggest I write about cooking instead because “people would like you better!” All of which, of course, just fuels me to write another column.

I also get a ton of positive email and community feedback, and my readers, because I openly share my own intensely personal stories in the newspaper, are fiercely supportive and loyal. It’s a pleasure to write for them.

Q: Do you have favorite pieces of your own writing accessible on online that you’d like to share with our readers? If so, why do you like these pieces? 

I’ve spent the last 4 years writing almost exclusively about politics, something like a hundred pieces at this point, so it might be surprising that my personal favorites are not at all political. A long piece I wrote about my relationship with rescue dog Lucy remains a favorite. It was very challenging structurally, so it took a long time to write, and it also remains my most-rejected piece (27 times!) before it found a home at the Tahoma Literary Journal. I think it took a year and a half to publish it, but I simply refused to give up. It is also the one piece I still cannot read aloud without my voice breaking.

In 2015, I wrote a column for my hometown Missouri newspaper after I’d heard about plans to tear down an old hotel. The news broke my heart. I sat right down at my laptop with absolutely no forethought and wrote about all the ways the Drury Lodge had served as a home to me throughout my life. Everything just poured out. After the story ran in the paper, I heard from so many people back home, people I had not heard from in decades, sharing what the hotel meant to them, as well. Drury Hotels included the piece in their training materials for new employees. When I went back to stay there for the last time before the demolition, every employee I saw hugged me and thanked me for writing what they felt. It was all wonderful and surreal.

Teri and One of Her Canine Muses

Q: You took a non-traditional educational path, delaying your bachelor’s degree until you were 39, then earning a MFA at 45. What challenges/motivations led you to delay and then seek and extended education?

I was a terrible teenage student. In high school my family life was in constant turmoil, which meant I spent most of my time trying not to be at home and rarely bothering with homework. I don’t remember anyone ever even asking to see my report cards.

I went to work straight out of high school, though I did try the local college and earned a 1.7 GPA my first semester. It was a disaster. Or, rather, I was. Plus I needed grants and loans to pay for it, so what was the point?

In my 20s, I had a job that paid 100% tuition for night school if I got As, so I took classes at University of Missouri – St. Louis and Washington University. I took business courses to help me with work, because I felt I owed them that for paying my tuition, but what I really wanted was to take literature and history classes and read books all day.

When I was in my early 30s, I married a man who had sole custody of his two kids. Eventually I quit work to stay home with them, and that’s when I went back to school at the University of Minnesota. To say I loved it there, that I adored my professors and my fellow students, doesn’t come close to how I felt about my experience. That’s also when I fell in love with writing. Unlike so many writers I know who started as kids, I wrote my first personal essays and short stories when I was about 35. They were awful! But I loved the work – writing a story felt like trying to put together a really complicated puzzle that I had to figure out – and a couple of my professors were encouraging. I kept trying.

My goal was to graduate before I turned 40, and I barely made it. A year later, with both kids grown and gone, we moved to San Jose, California and I applied to the creative writing program at San Jose State, never dreaming I’d get in. I got my masters there in 2010.

Q: You are currently working on a memoir about step-parenting. Why have your chosen that topic and how is that project coming along?

I’ve been thinking about writing this book for at least a decade, but I needed some distance from my subject-matter, meaning I needed to have the kids out of the house for some years to consider what I had to say.

I was a stepchild 3 times over. I’ve been a stepmother 24 years now. I got serious about writing a memoir about my experiences a couple of years ago, but it’s taken getting a good 60,000 words on the page to figure out the structure and the underlying questions: What is it like to want to be part of a family when you’re the outsider, when no one needs you there? How do we find where we belong in the world?

This residency could not have come at a more perfect time. I’m excited to spend my month at the Daisy Pettles House working on the first major re-write with no distractions.

Q: Your writing companion during the Daisy Pettles house residency will be a dog. Tell us about her, and why she’s your chosen muse and literary confident.

Hazel is our latest rescue. She’s about 2 years old, 40 lbs, and she’s got to be a combination at least five different breeds. She was found starving, with Parvo, covered in ticks, and nursing a litter of puppies. Back in December I’d gone to the shelter to meet a senior dog, but unfortunately realized the dog would not get along with my other 2 dogs. I was about to leave when I passed by Hazel’s kennel. She walked quietly up to the fence, and I swear she tilted her head, looked me right in the eye, and said, “Hey lady, what about me?” When I knelt down to pet her through the chain-link, she leaned her whole body into me and moaned.

Hazel Belle – official Writer’s Muse and “Dog-In-Residence”

Hazel has been my constant companion ever since, happy to go with me everywhere, whether it’s a drive, a walk in the park, or to sleep in my office doorway while I work. I’m thrilled I get to bring her with me for the residency.

Q: You currently teach writing at the Carnegie Center in Lexington. Who are your students? What do you like and/or loathe about that job?

I teach personal essay and memoir writing, and my students are mostly over 50 and new to writing. I often come home from a class and tell my husband I don’t know which I love more, writing or teaching writing. There is nothing more satisfying than helping someone who’s been thinking about writing for decades learn, for the first time, how to be vulnerable and brave on the page. Teaching is such an honor. I love it.

Q: You’re 54. Any advice for older women who may have delayed their writing careers while raising children and families or facing other of life’s many challenges?

You often hear the cliché “it’s never too late,” but it’s a cliché because it is so often true. When I went back to college in my 30s and then graduate school in my 40s, I felt awkward at first but soon felt right at home. Like I was right where I was supposed to be. I feel fortunate that I went to school so much later, when I actually wanted to be there and knew what I was interested in learning.

I often wonder if our kids go to college/grad school too early, before they’ve lived a little and had time to consider their interests – what they love, what they’re passionate about – apart from their parents’ expectations and the influence of childhood friends.

I didn’t publish my first story until I was 38.

I didn’t become a political columnist until I was 51.

I’ll be 55 this summer, and I’m just now working on my first book, a book I could have never written, for lack of both skill and courage, before this minute. All to say, it’s never too late to begin.

Q: Where can our readers find you online?

My website is TeriCarter.net.  My email is KentuckyTeri@gmail.com. You can also find me on Twitter, where I spend way too much time, @teri_atthepaper

Finalists Announced in Daisy Pettles Grants for Women Writers June 2020

writing contest for women june 2020 finalists | daisy pettles house

Bedford, Indiana (Lawrence County); Bloomington, Indiana (Monroe County); Southern Indiana arts and entertainment news

Date: February 25, 2020

Daisy Pettles, Indiana author and philanthropist, is pleased to announce the grant finalists in the first annual Daisy Pettles Contest for Women Writers. The competition is open to women writers, aged forty or over, published or unpublished, working in all genres, except for poetry.

The competition, with a top cash prize of $1,000 and a free month-long residency in the Daisy Pettles House for Women Writers, was steep.

Applicants included a Fulbright Scholar, a Pushcart prize nominee, and several published novelists. Entrants came from diverse backgrounds and genres, ranging from political columnists to commercial romance authors.

A notable number of applicants had yet to be published, yet submitted works in progress that rivaled top prize-winning peers. Applications flowed in from across the United States, Iran, the United Kingdom, and Australia.

The judges have, in round one, narrowed the possible prize winners down to the top seven applicants.

Writing Contest for Women, Finalists – June 2020

Below is the official list of the June 2020 writing contest finalists, in alpha order.
  • Teri Carter – Lawrenceburg, Kentucky|
    http://www.tericarter.net/home.html
    Working on a Memoir … “The Real Mom,” about the step-parenting experience.
  • Marie Drake – Golden, Colorado
    Working on a Memoir … “Crack through My Heart,” a memoir of growing up in the 60s and 70s with a drug-dealing, hippie mother, and a full-colonel CIA agent father.
  • Diane Hartman – Plainfield, Indiana
    Working on a Memoir … “And All Shall Be Well: Driving the Backroads of Ireland and Finding Myself,” a retired woman gathers her courage and goes in search of her ancestry.
  • Robin Israel – Scottsdale, Arizona
    https://robinisrael.com/
    Working on a Novel … “Leave the Frigging Marshmallows,” a coming-of-age story about an adolescent girl growing up in a dysfunctional Jewish family in the 1980s.
  • Celena Janton – Vail, Arizona
    Working on a Fantasy Romance Novel … “The Dreamers,” based on a reimagined Greek myth.
  • Mehrnoosh Khorsand – United Kingdom
    Working on a Novel … “How I Rescued My Daughter,” about an Iranian girl forced into an unhappy arranged marriage for self-serving reasons by her father. Based on the author’s own experiences.
  • Robin Lovelace – Plainfield, Indiana
    https://www.indianawriters.org/blogs/news/member-spotlight-robin-lee-lovelace
    Working on a Novel … “The Hextens of Jackson County,” a historical reimagining of a family of witches living in rural Indiana in the late 1940s

The top three women applicants, chosen from the above finalists, will be announced on March 15, 2020. They will receive the following support grants and recognition for their written works.

#1 – Grand Prize: Free Residency –  Writer in Residence at the Daisy Pettles House in Bedford, Indiana, USA, a vintage 1920s bungalow, equipped with all the amenities a women writer might need to kick back and write her heart out, undisturbed, for a month … PLUS a $1,000 CASH grant.

#2 – 1st Runner-Up: $250 Cash Grant; PLUS Award Certificate as Finalist – Writer in Residence at the Daisy Pettles House for the year awarded; PLUS if for any reason the Grand Prize Winner is unable to attend the writing residency the residency immediately passes to the 1st Runner-Up.

#3 – 2nd Runner-Up: $100 Cash Award Grant; PLUS Award Certificate as Finalist – Writer in Residence at the Daisy Pettles House for the year awarded.

The final grants and free residency will be awarded based on writing talent along with a consideration of which women writers might benefit most from the awards given the details they chose to share with the judges in their application essays.

REMINDER to WOMEN WRITERS: the next women’s writing competition, for a July 2020 residency and supporting grant, is still OPEN to applicants. 

Submissions for the July prizes and residency close on April 15, 2020.

Older women writers (aged 40 or older) are invited to apply.

Women Writers Contest Finalists Announced in Indiana

The Daisy Pettles Women’s Writing Competition is sponsored by the Hoosier writer and philanthropist Daisy Pettles, in honor of her mother, June, an avid reader. June passed away in the spring of 2019, leaving her home in the care of her daughter, Daisy.

Daisy is working with a team of women writers, artists, and Indiana historical preservationists to convert the home, a vintage 1920s bungalow located in southern Indiana (Lawrence County, south of Monroe County, Bloomington) to a retreat and residency center for older women writers.

The goal of the Women’s Writing House project is to discover, nurture, and reward diversity in women’s voices and literature.

The Women’s Writing House can be supported through donations at Go Fund Me.

HOUSE RENTAL NEAR IU > Women writers and artists can rent the Daisy Pettles House as a private retreat and to host girlfriend get-aways when the home is not in use by a designated writer in residence. Close to Indiana University, the fully furnished home is also a great place for alumni IU get-to-gethers and extended stays by visiting faculty and artists. Contact Cindy Yager, co-ordinator for availability dates and details, cindy@daisypettleswritingcontest.com

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Visit our GoFundMe page to help support The Daisy Pettles House and women writers in need.

 

Rent the Daisy Pettles Writers House

Women Writers & Artists — Private House Rental — Need a safe, cozy retreat house? Daisy’s House, near Bloomington, Indiana, is available for weekly, monthly, or longer private rentals  anytime a winning writer is not in residency.  Groups of up to 4 adults may occupy the 2 bedroom house at one time. Stocked and fully equipped kitchen, two bathrooms, large yard, fireplace, large living room for group gatherings. An idea, safe COVID stay-cation home for book clubs, girlfriend getaways, artists of all types, writing groups, IU scholars and lecturers, reunions.

Contact cindy@daisypettleswritingcontest.com for available dates and 2021 rates!

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Contact Cindy for details!

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