About Andrea

Photo Credit: Melissa Winslow/Litchfield County Times

I’ve known I wanted to write ever since the duck-and-cover days of elementary school. I’d work on stories and poems, which I kept burrowed in notebooks. But I took the long way around to becoming a writer.

It may have been all those Cherry Ames books, but I became a nurse and as an RN worked in oncology for a number of years. Still, ever since college, I knew deep down I wouldn’t be a nurse until I retired. After bumping into someone I knew who had grown bitter and angry, it struck me that if I didn’t give my writing a chance I would regret it the rest of my life. There’s nothing wrong with failing. There’s a lot wrong with not trying. I guess it depends how badly you want something, how hard you’re willing to work at it, and what you’re willing to give up to get there. I wanted to write. I needed to write. I’m very glad I made the choice to be a nurse—it changed my life. I don’t think I could have been a nurse without writing, or a writer without nursing. Although I no longer work in clinical nursing, I do contribute poems to journals and to anthologies of poetry and prose by nurses. My current day-job is as a writing instructor for the Institute of Children’s Literature. I teach three of their courses, and love it. It’s very much like nursing, really. For a little bit of time, you’re sharing people’s lives—their hopes and dreams, their fears and setbacks—and guiding them along their way.

Why children’s writing? I think part of it is because of its power and how books made such a difference to my life as a child. Part of it is for the same reason I became a nurse—you do what’s important to do, not what’s facile or profitable. You try and make a difference. And part of it is what Madeleine L’Engle said (and I’m paraphrasing): if what you write is too difficult for adults, then write it for kids. Although I often write for adults, still, whether it was the little voice inside my head, or the one inside my heart, also writing for children was a given.

Who else am I? I’m a nature person. I like to garden. I love the woods where I live, tucked in Connecticut’s western hills. They are “lovely, dark, and deep . . .” like Frost’s. They also remind me of the woods behind our house when I was growing up, where I climbed my first tree—and promptly fell out of it. (The beginning and the end of my tomboy career.) I love birds and birding. I love their freedom and the music they make. An oriole’s song can bring me to a standstill.

As for man-made music, I’ve grown into bluesy Jazz with such pleasure. I’ve always loved Classical music—from the Baroque, through the Classical era to the Romantic. (Thank you Leonard Bernstein for all those Young People’s Concerts and my Girl Scout troop for the trip to Lincoln Center, which allowed me to sneak back into the Philharmonic—now, Avery Fisher—Hall and watch Stokowski rehearse). I do love Bach, Telemann, and Vivaldi. And Mozart. The adagio from his Clarinet Concerto in A makes me weep.

I love how Vermeer uses light, Cézanne uses color, and Bonnard uses white. I can get lost in a Rothko. Color affects me deeply—yet I love to sketch with charcoals because of the stark range of values. Sometimes I play with watercolors.

I also knit. A lot. It’s what I do if I’m not writing. I knit for the joy of it (and the challenge), to play with texture, and I knit to hold color in my hands. Picking colors for a sweater in a yarn shop is definitely a flow experience. Mostly I knit because I can create with fiber. I like to design my own sweaters, hats, mittens, socks, cowls, scarves…you get the idea.