Author Q & A
1. What inspired you to write a book about the Cottage Hotel?
In 2022, while I was finishing writing a book of poetry about Mendon hamlet and my friend John Ross ("Burdock"), who once owned The Cottage, I visited the hamlet to do research and take photos. While I was there I had lunch with the current owner, Hilary Stott, and she suggested I write a history of The Cottage. It made immediate sense to me and from that day forward I dove headfirst in what turned out to be nine months of intensive research and interviews. It has been such a joyful process and all so incredibly interesting that it almost makes me sad to finish the book!
2. What are your ties to Mendon and the Rochester area?
From the age of 12 to 18, I lived in Knickerbocker Hills in Pittsford and attended both Pittsford-Sutherland and Pittsford-Mendon High Schools. After graduation, I gravitated to Mendon hamlet while attending the University of Rochester as an English and Philosophy major. Even though it was quite a commute to school, I loved it there in the hamlet, in great measure because Burdock gave me a job as the day bartender at the Cottage Hotel with very flexible hours, and I lived kitty- corner from The Cottage which certainly made it easy to get to work!
3. What drew you to Mendon hamlet in the first place?
I loved the small town vibe of the hamlet and the feeling of being out in the country, which has always been a source of both peace and energy for me. I often hiked in Mendon Ponds as a child and it was lovely to have that beautiful and ancient landscape so close by.
4. You frequently refer to the Finger Lakes in your work. Tell us about that.
When I was 22, I bought and homesteaded a 50-acre farm overlooking Canadice Lake. The land was Seneca Indian territory and it made a powerful impression on me—so much so that I began learning the Seneca language and researching its poetic heritage. Although I lived there only a few years, it continues to greatly influence my work.
5. Explain what you mean by “homesteading”?
My grandparents owned a dairy farm in Alexandria Bay, New York, so farming has always been in my DNA. When I found my own special piece of land, my husband then and I grew all our own food, foraged for medicinal plants, heated our house with wood, hunted and fished, and were working towards being totally energy sufficient. It was such an enormously soulful endeavor, that many years later I did the same thing and created a healing center and biodynamic farm in Kentucky called “Satori” based on the teachings of Rudolph Steiner.
6. What other books have you written?
I’ve written several children’s books, a book on artist John Wedda and civil rights, and co-authored a memoir with the late Dr. Annemarie Roeper, the co-founder of the Roeper School for Gifted Children in Michigan, who became a dear friend and mentor. I’ve also ghost written quite a number of memoirs for other authors. After a harrowing experience getting lost in the Utah desert while I was solo tent camping across the U.S., I was called to write a time travel novel for middle-grade readers titled All Their Yesterdays.
7. You’ve been a publisher for over 15 years. What kinds of books do you publish?
My company, Azalea Art Press, focuses primarily on life narratives, but I publish across all genres—poetry, children’s books, fiction, and creative nonfiction—for both established and upcoming authors. I’ve put into print over 100 titles since 2008, all of which have been what you’d call a “labor of love.” I’m very passionate about books and authors and independent publishing. Writing was something I was called to do from a very early age and publishing seemed a very natural progression from that.
8. Who are your literary influences?
There’s so many! I would have to say that reading the original texts of many of the world’s religions—the Bible, the Bagavad Gita, the Upanishads, the Koran, the Book of Mormon, have all given me a strong foundation in tribal storytelling. The fantastic wordplay in Shakespeare is something that always turns me on and never ceases to amaze me. I have been most profoundly influenced by women poets such as Anna Akmatova, Jane Kenyon, Marie Howe and Louise Gluck as well as Wendell Berry, William Stafford, Wallace Stevens and others. I fell in love with the French surrealists and writers such as Chilean poet Pablo Neruda in my early life, as well as fiction writers that are too numerous to mention.
9. What is your favorite book?
That’s easy: The Amazing Adventures of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo, a brilliant tale of love and loss and compassion. As Edward is told in the book, "If you have no intention of loving or being loved, then the whole journey is pointless." That rather explains my own philosophy of life.
10. What’s next?
I hope to finish All Their Tomorrows, the sequel to the novel All Their
Yesterdays, which was interrupted in part by work on the book on the Cottage Hotel. I’d also like to publish books by some of the local Mendon and Honeoye Falls historians, who all have important stories to share with us.