I slide open the screen door and step into the cool of an early morning. Soon, the sun warms my back as the earth spins her body. With deliberate steps and a steady pace, I would leave the silence of the asphalt to meet shifting crushed gravel, my path bisecting a dense green landscape illuminated by foggy sunbeams piercing slivers [...]
Though it may sound counterintuitive, writers have been distracted during this pandemic. But how can we be now that we're no longer engaged in a multi-tasked life previously understood as “normal?” Self-isolation should give us nothing but time to write but we can't seem to get the job done. The absence of what filled my time, a void, became the [...]
Writing my memoir was like driving down Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. Upon my return from being away from the city for a few years, the order of exits was fuzzy in my memory, creating a challenge to my navigation. I had once depended on knowing each exit like a marker signaling when to turn or to keep going. My [...]
And what a post publication week it has been! On pub day, Culturalist included Under the Birch Tree in its “Top 10 Inspiring Stories of Self-Discovery to Read When You’re Feeling Lost.” And Buzzfeed listed my memoir as “Five Captivating Memoirs You Need to Read This Summer.” My book made a list? I certainly didn't expect my book to make [...]
Find out what first inspired me to write, my motivation to publish my memoir now, and how I found the publishing process to be, plus answers to many more questions about the making of Under the Birch Tree from my interview with the San Francisco Book Review. San Francisco Book Review interviews Nancy Chadwick
You will take over 200 million steps in your lifetime. Imagine if your feet could narrate a travelogue, report miles and destinations, when they are at rest, and injuries they may have sustained. What would they say? They dance and run, burrow in sand, hold you in mountain pose. Your feet connect you. Your feet track memories, record the spot [...]
The asphalt path just north of Oak Street was abuzz with bikers, runners, inline skaters and walkers. Warmth radiated from a sunny sky to cool the early afternoon spring air. I jumped on the path to join the others in a pace too fast for me then but would later be a rhythm I could fold into. Following a pulse [...]
Memories of growing up in a north suburb of Chicago remain vivid with me today. In my memoir, Under the Birch Tree, due out in June, I recall my little-girl self’s life in my small town of Deerfield, growing up in the neighborhood of Colony Point, and on Carlisle Avenue where my home, a “red brick colonial was the unspoiled [...]
One August afternoon in 1967, Mom dressed me in a navy dress, patterned in tiny white polka dots, with an appliqué of paintbrushes and an artist’s palette in primary colors at the hem, and a white Peter Pan collar around my neck. White anklet socked feet, fitting snuggly into blood-red Mary Janes, anchored my chubby legs. While standing at attention [...]
“I have a confession to make . . .” my substitute yoga teacher said last week at the beginning of class. Her tight face admitted guilt, matching her sheepish eyes. “My kids have been home on break and . . . I haven’t practiced yoga all week. Until this morning, when I came to my mat to prepare for this [...]