I write for kids. I write for cooks. I have 50 published books out. 11 of them won awards.
I had an adventurous, feisty, interesting marriage for 23 largely happy years. My husband, Ned, went out bicycling one day, got hit by a car and died.
I garden. I blog. I cook. I live in Vermont. Used to live in Arkansas. Before that, New York. These days I hang out a lot with my very old
mother, Charlotte Zolotow, a famous children’s book writer. Also her cat, Tumbleweed. My late father, Maurice Zolotow, was Marilyn Monroe’s first biographer.
Yes, it’s my real name.
I think anxiety, procrastination and discomfort are powerful creative forces in disguise. I think that apparent obstacles are building materials. That writing practices and principles spill over, cornucopia-like: from writing to life. I teach writing. teach people how to befriend uncertainty and fear through writing and thereby reclaim their creative powers of self-love and reinvention. And become better writers.
I think we’re all part of the narrative life tells itself about itself. No wonder we all have something to say.
WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED
Safety went to work in the World Trade Towers one morning.
Trust believed her husband when he said, ‘It was only one kiss.’
Faith, with her tiny silver cross, star of David, om sign, served the victims
of the plague. ‘How’ she asked God, ‘Could you let this happen?‘
God replied, but did so inaudibly.
Belief clapped hands for Tinkerbelle, who did not arrive.
Certainty, the bough on which the cradle rocked, broke.
The baby fell down, down, down into limitless dark star-free space.
The baby falls still. The baby will fall forever.
Mystery said:
I am big enough to hold you all.
Mystery said:
Are you big enough, small human, to hold me?
c Crescent Dragonwagon, 2009
