"If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you:
I am here to live out loud."
— Émile Zola
— Émile Zola
The Beginning
I wrote my first poem when I was eight years old. I was in my bedroom, and my mom was on our patio drinking a cup of coffee. When she realized that I was holed up in my bedroom on a lovely summer evening instead of playing freeze tag in the back yard with my sisters, she called through the window, "Kristin, what are you doing in there?"
Irritated at being interrupted in the middle of my creative process, I said, "Mooommm, I'm writing a poem. I am a poet, you know."
"You are?" she said. This was the first she'd heard about it. I hadn't yet shared the fact that I'd recently discovered my soul's true nature.
"Yeeessss," I answered. "I am."
"Well," she said, after a long pause, "you can wrote poems, but you can't just be a poet. You have to do something else to make a living."
"I do not," I said, and although I don't remember exactly, I'm sure my response included a low growl, a bit of eye rolling, and an audible tssskk.
That first poem was called "The Hummingbird." I've been writing like crazy ever since.
The Middle
Between the brilliantly penned "The Hummingbird" and today, I've had some wonderful relationships and exciting adventures. I earned a BA in English and Journalism from Indiana University (Bloomington) and an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia College Chicago. I lived in three major U.S. cities (Washington, D.C., Chicago, and New York) and on a 588,000-acre ranch in New Mexico where I often saw more bears and elk than people. During the middle years, I learned how to fly fish, navigate a subway system in any given city, and be way less shy than I was growing up.
I also learned that I love venturing to places I've never been before, having a whole lot of crazy experiences, and then writing about them. My keen interest in place was what led me to write my first novel, Thirsty, which is set in the steel-making milieu of turn-of-the-twentieth-century Pittsburgh…what led me to write numerous essays about bears and fish and love while living on the 588,000-acre ranch in New Mexico…and what led me to write the memoir about moving to China that I'm working on now.
Rather Heminway-esque, I know, but so far, no bull fighting.
The Now
In 2005, I was living in quaint Newburyport, Massachusetts. I wrote, taught writing, hung out with my nephews who lived down the street, and walked my dog. Life was pretty good. Kind of like this...
la dee da
la dee da
dee da dee da
Then all of a sudden...
Whoosh!
Whirr!
Zing!
Ka-bang!
I met my husband-to-be and had a whirlwind romance. We met on September 8, 2005. Married on February 12, 2006. And six weeks later, moved halfway around the world to Shanghai, China.
Yep, Shanghai, China.
Since then, my world has become a much bigger, happier, and funnier place. (I am married to an Irishman, after all. Funny is a given.) On September 26, 2008, my husband and I adopted our daughter Tulliver from Vietnam. And just a few short weeks after I returned to Shanghai from Vietnam, I learned that my debut novel, Thirsty, was going to be published in 2009 by Swallow Press.
How's that for a good year?
A baby and a book deal.
Along the way, I've learned that Mom was right (but don't tell her that). I do have to do other things to make a living, but luckily, I've been able to make all of them involve words. I write essays and articles about Shanghai, parenting, bears, and lots of other things. My work has appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Poets & Writers Magazine, The Baltimore Review, San Diego Family Magazine, and The Gettysburg Review. I have a monthly column in Writers on the Rise, and I've been teaching fiction and nonfiction writing for the past fifteen years. Here in China, I curate a great reading series for local writers called Out Loud! The Shanghai Writers Literary Salon, and since moving to Shanghai, I've been chronicling my adventures (and misadventures) in my blog.
If there is anything you'd like to know that I haven't covered here, feel free to zip me an email.
