About Me

Photo Credit: Nancy Mitchell

I reenacted a childhood image of me at Crater Lake with my still-wispy hair blowing askew under a recent fall overcast sky. In the childhood version the water was bright blue and my hair was blond and curly. I wore shorts, so it was summertime. The smile in both images is the same, but there is one big difference between these two photos. This image is real and the other was a figment of my four-year-old mind—according to my older sister who has disabused me of the notion that our family ever visited Crater Lake. Although I began calling myself a writer late in life, I was a tale-maker from early on. 

Over the course of my professional life, I wrote thousands of words in children’s memory books and took thousands of photos to document their work at the childcare center where I was both the founding director and a teacher guided by a Reggio Emila-inspired philosophy. When I retired, I was ready to write my own memories and stories. My husband had passed away two years prior and I set off traveling. This blog was birthed to document my experiences on the road, chart my way out of residual grief, and write tales untold.

In the fall of 2016 I was awarded a writer's residency in the San Juan Islands at the Helen R. Whiteley Center to complete a manuscript titled Mapping the Topography of Grief, A Travel Memoir. I have been a guest columnist for the Union Bulletin newspaper and currently teach writing and cellphone photography through the Quest program at Walla Walla Community College. My photos have won awards and been published in literary magazines. Many of these blog posts began with the consideration of what to write based on a single beloved photo.

  

You can find my photographs on Instagram at kathy.mcconnell.505 .

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Warmly yours,

Kathy McConnell

kathymcconnell@gmail.com

Self-Portrait, 2014