Arizona Writer and podcaster: Celebrating AZ!
Arizona Writer and podcaster: Celebrating AZ!
Background
About me
- I started journalling at six and never quit saving stories, then got to tell them to a wider audience starting at the Green Valley News. I always loved knowing Sedona was named for my great-grandma, but thought resarch was boring until my 30s. Then my dad Larry said, "Journalism is history on the fly," and I realized stories flow one to the next era. I love old hotels, road trips, and have never met cup of coffee I didn't like, although a pot at Gray Hills Trading Post ten hours after brewing came close. Tom and I raised up Sedona and Rye, now grown and gone, so we live with Mayer the doggie. (Happy Jack and Leupp came before him.) For those who like bona fides, I've been on boards for Arizona Centennial, Arizona Humanities Council, Arizona Trail, and Arizona Women's Hall of Fame (notice a pattern?).
What I do
- Some jobs are timeless: healer, inkeeper, grocer, and bard. From print to radio and television, columns, books, and now podcasting, storytelling is what I do. Words are kind of all I know how to use, and words about aspects of Arizona are my favorite kind. (And since a picture can be worth a thousand of them, taking pictures for four of my books has been pretty great too.) Getting to open KTVK-TV's Northern Arizona Bureau in Flagstaff opened up that part of the state, and the wonders I found led to "Chief Yellowhourse LIves On!" a collection of 52 essays published by Arizona Highways. I wrote an op-ed column for the Arizona Republic called "Arizona Correspondent" and am delighted now to get to do "Celebrating Arizona: everything from A to Z" with Julie Morrison. We started that because wriiting "Arizona FriendtTrips: Stories from the Road" was too much fun to stop once it was turned in to the publisher. I'm still pleased that I got to be the OneBookAZ author when the Arizona Centennial book I wrote (and there's an amazing story behind how it got published that I'll share if you ask) was voted into that honor. With my dad Larry I got to visit tiny libraries and larger, in bergs and hamlets as well as cities. We share the red-setter gene that joyfully jumps into any open car door, so we savored it all.