For details on my one-day workshops, including Memoir in Moments on March 30 and The Art of Writing Picture Books on April 3, please click here.

When he was eight, my son –known in the family for his rare, uncanny pronouncements–looked at me one day and said, “Mom, what if we’re all just people in a book, and someone somewhere is writing us?” 

A few months ago, inside a little free library, I saw a hardcover copy of my first published novel. I pulled it out and looked through it –it was like an artifact from a previous life–and an airplane ticket fell out. That too was old and faded, but I made out the name of an acquaintance from many years ago. I pictured him on a plane, high above the clouds, carrying the secret lives of my people with him as he turned the pages.

Secret Reading Matter, by Tadeusz Dąbrowski, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones

I take the books left for free recycling mainly for their smell, 
I stick my nose among the pages, into business not my own, 
then stroll around someone else’s home,
peeping into their kitchen and their bedroom. But once 
their smell has faded and the book’s imbued with mine, 
I leave it at a bus stop or in a mailbox.
Busy nonstop with their crimes, their love lives, 
good and evil, keeping an eye on the time
and the setting, the characters haven’t a clue how many books 
they’re carrying away in their clothing


Please click here for more information on Tadeusz Dąbrowski.

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