Author of over 400 Books for Children and Adults
During the time that my husband’s cancer returned (see The Radiation Sonnets), though his death, and up to five years later, I wrote poetry. Some of it was to keep me sane. Some of it was to record what happened and how it affected me. And some was in the hopes that what I wrote might go out there and help others.
I have always loved Chagall’s bizarre, colorful flying-in-the-sky-fiddler’s-on-the-roof pictures. And so when Pat Lewis (now Children’s Poet Laureate of America) and I started talking about doing some books of poetry together, I offerred Chagall and his action-packed life to Pat as a prospect. We had
Back before 2000, I wrote a short story of the same name and it was published by anthologists Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow. The story was about five pages long, a West Virginia take on Snow White. It was always a story I thought could be expanded into a novel one day.