In The Benefits of Being an Octopus, Zoey’s family relies on their EBT card (aka food stamps or SNAP benefits) to be able to have healthy food in the fridge. This month, there’s a good article in The Atlantic by Derek Thompson discusses the importance of supporting low-income families with the financial assistance that is needed so… Read more »
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Letters for Parkland & Beyond
I’ve gone through such a range of emotions since hearing about Parkland twelve days ago. After the massacre at Sandy Hook, I was furious that the public support for gun reform wasn’t being translated to the halls of the Statehouse, and I started GunSenseVT, an organization to champion the common ground on the issue of… Read more »
On Goodreads!
It’s now possible to add THE BENEFITS OF BEING AN OCTOPUS to your Goodreads to-read list! Just click this button, and then click on the arrow next to “Want-to-Read” and select “Want to Read” to get it to register.
An Official Title!
Coming up with the right title for a novel is always a process. I had the working title I used when writing it, but I knew that wouldn’t be the final version. A year ago, I bounced ideas off my critique partners, but none of them felt quite right. Over the past month, my editor… Read more »
Friendships that Span Political Boundaries
In the The Benefits of Being an Octopus I explore how difficult — yet how necessary — it is to develop friendships cross barriers. This TED Talk by Caitlin Quattromani and Lauran Arledge centers on a great examples of two friends who were able to maintain their relationship in a true and honest way, despite their… Read more »
Finding Your Voice — Even When It’s Hard
One of the major themes in my novel, The Benefits of Being an Octopus, centers on the power of finding your own voice. Sometimes the obstacles in front of us feel way too overwhelming to tackle. On top of that there is the failure — in public! around people you know! — that can keep us… Read more »
I was born in poverty in Appalachia. ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ doesn’t speak for me. – The Washington Post
It is important to understand how hard people in poverty are often working. The reality came through loud and clear when I did research for The Benefits of Being an Octopus, and I am glad Betsy Rader is speaking up about her own experiences in her Washington Post Opinion piece: “I was born in poverty in… Read more »
Podcast: Making Room for Civil Discourse
The cultural divide that exists in The Benefits of Being an Octopus is not one that’s easy to cross, but it is possible. Recently, I had a great conversation with Chris Lenois at WKVT Radio’s Green Mountain Mornings about the work that’s needed for civil discourse and my visit to Rutland High School to find common ground… Read more »
Learning the Dynamics of Emotional Abuse
The women I know who are survivors of domestic abuse are seriously fearless and inspiring people. When I began the process of writing The Benefits of Being an Octopus it was so important to me to get that aspect of the story right. That meant that even though I was familiar with the dynamics of emotional abuse… Read more »
Using First Person Accounts to Understand the Realities of the Working Poor
I have long been a believer in the power of first person accounts. My Masters-in-Teaching thesis began by focusing on all the problems of history textbooks and then morphed into a 200-page alternative U.S. History textbook that relied entirely on first person accounts. Not only do first person accounts put regular people smack dab in… Read more »