Back in 2003, the commissioner of Chicago’s Department on Aging showed up at a bookstore event to have me sign a copy of Long Time, No See. Joyce Gallagher must have liked what she read – she phoned me later to invite me to lunch, and in-between bites of egg salad sandwiches at Maxim’s, she […]

I’m putting the final touches on my morning keynote for tomorrow’s Women’s Leadership Symposium in Chicago. The conference theme is Synergy of Sisterhood: Breaking Barriers, Creating Alliances, and the University of Illinois – Chicago’s Women’s Leadership & Resource Center is offering workshops all day long. One workshop that particularly caught my eye (okay, my ear) […]

I was extremely flattered when author and illustrator Sheila Welch asked me to participate in a book festival she was putting together in Freeport, Ill, and oh so disappointed to have to say no: Freeport is far away from Chicago and had no public transportation options. As you are about to find out from this […]

Both of the memoir-writing classes I teach are taking time off in June, and one of the last topics I assigned before the break was this: choose a photograph, any photograph, and describe it to me in 500 words or less. “But please don’t say, well, this is a woman in a yellow skirt with […]

Here’s my husband Mike Knezovich with a book review. Sometimes when I’m at an airport, a hotel lobby, walking down a city street, in an elevator, I watch the humans and think: Really, we’re all monkeys. I learned there is some truth to that glib observation a few years ago when I wrote a freelance […]