Publications and Awards

Books:

At Fifty: Letters to My Granddaughter.
Available.

Excerpt:
“When I was seventeen, I remember the women in my mother’s family gathered on my grandmother’s front porch. My mother and I were swaying back and forth on the swing; my Aunt Margaret was comfortably plopped on a lawn chair; and her two daughters balanced on the banister. My grandmother sat in her rocker, her lap full of lima beans she was shucking for tomorrow’s dinner.

It was dusk, supper over and dishes cleared away. My grandmother didn’t have air-conditioning so evenings on the front porch provided respite from the heat of the house. The sky was that swirl of lavender and blue, mauve and purple common to the South in August. The men, my father and grandfather, were out on the back porch, probably taking one last walk through my grandfather’s garden.

My grandmother was talking about her favorite subjects: trashy TV, trashy women and no-good men.

“I reckon a man would drop dead if he had to wash a dish or change a diaper. Humph,” my grandmother said. “And those women on TV, wearing such low cut dresses and tight, too tight pants. Men ought to wear pants, not women. No wonder so many girls get into trouble these days.”

At that moment, the phone rang and my grandmother gathered her apron into a kind of sack for the beans, then hurried into the house. We heard her shaky “Hello” and the slow melody of her conversation with what must have been one of her many cousins.

My aunt looked at me and said, “She wasn’t always like that, you know. When we were girls, she didn’t talk against men or sex the way she does now. She wasn’t like that.”

I was immediately intrigued with the idea that my grandmother might have been different from the woman I knew. At some earlier point in her life, my grandmother might have been warmer, more comfortable. I was saddened because I would never know this other, mysterious woman. I wanted to know what had happened to cause this shift in my grandmother’s character. More than that, I wanted to know the earlier version of her.

And that’s why I’ve written this memoir. That, coupled with the desire we all have to be known deeply. I suspect that’s why all writers write: they simply wish to be known. Now, when my granddaughter is a young woman, she will be able to know me, the woman I was at the time of her birth. I cannot predict what kind of woman I’ll be when she’s twenty-one, or if I’ll even be alive when she comes of age. But that won’t matter because I’ve written it all down, here, on these pages.”

"Namesake" (short story) Racing Home: An Anthology of Award-Winning North Carolina Writers.
The Paper Journey Press, Durham, NC. Sharlene Baker, Editor. 2001.

Excerpt:
“Funny about names. You might guess that my great uncle Edwin was a lifelong bachelor with thin, narrow shoulders and close-set eyes that pinched together when he tallied his ledgers. And you’d be right, of course. That’s exactly what an Edwin would look like.”

"The Swing" (short story) Generation to Generation.
Papier Mache Press, Watsonville, CA. Sandra Martz, Editor. 1998.

Excerpt:
“He won’t think of that now. Instead, he’ll keep his eyes on the little one in the swing, his granddaughter, Janey, his Butterball. He notices how her nervous hands have stopped their flight now that she’s in the swing, and she’s no longer mumbling crazy gibberish to herself. Her clear blue eyes are still vacant, a lost look he can barely stand, but at least she’s not slinging her tiny fingers against the air, flailing at whatever she imagines is there.”

"Washing Helen's Hair (short story) Grow Old Along With Me.
Papier Mache Press, Watsonville, CA. Sandra Martz, Editor. 1996.

Excerpt:
“Helen kneels on the oak stool in front of the bathroom sink. Her knees, lumpy with arthritis, hit the faded red cushion with a soft thud. Almost dizzy, she rests her head on the cold rim of enamel. With her left hand, she caresses the familiar grain of the wooden legs, feels the varnish and where it has thinned in spots. It is her stool, the one her husband, Alonzo, made for her years ago. She smiles.”

Magazines:

Anne's work has appeared in a variety of literary and commercial magazines including Our State, Lonzie's Fried Chicken, Caprice, Cities and Roads, Mt. Olive Review, Artemis, Crucible, Notre Dame Review, and others.

Awards:

Blumenthal Writer Series, 2001 and 1996.
Finalist-New Letters Awards, 2001.
Finalist-Sherwood Anderson Contest, 2001.
First Place, Augusta, Georgia Arts Council, 1997.
Regional Artist Grant, Winston-Salem Arts Council, 1996.
Writer's Residency, The Syvenna Foundation, 1993.
Emerging Artist Grant, Greensboro Arts Council, 1991.